Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) apparently didn’t pay attention to the firestorm of criticism that surrounded Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-TN) last week, following a Tennessee town hall where the latter refused to help an 11-year-old girl whose father is in deportation proceedings.
“I have a dad who’s undocumented,” the 11-year-old Josie Molina asked Desjarlais. “What can I do so that he can stay with me?”
“The answer remains the same,” Desjarlais coldly told her, to the applause of Tea Party audience members. “We have laws and that we need to follow those laws, and that’s where we’re at.”
After a town hall last week in Pierson, Florida, DeSantis was asked a similar question by Laura Coache, a DACA’mented DREAMer. Laura tried to ask her question during the event but wasn’t called on, so she found him afterward and asked him to support immigration reform so that her family would not have to be separated.
“My daughter is a U.S. citizen and she wants to ask you why you want to take her father out of this country,” Laura said according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
“I don’t know her father,” DeSantis replied.
DeSantis also said that he will not support the Senate immigration bill, which will create a path to citizenship as well as increase border security.
The town of Pierson is about 60% Mexican, with a large undocumented population. Five audience members at DeSantis’ town hall asked questions about immigration reform, including George Shierling, who argued that it is not right to deport the parents of US-born children.
“I believe you should create a program to put the parents on a path to citizenship and if they are not citizens by the time the child turns 18, deport the parents then,” Shierling said.