Colorado Democrats put together a bill that was designed to protect immigrant communities from fascistic federal ICE overreach. HB17-1230 was introduced by Reps. Joe Salazar and Daneya Esgar.
“The Ralph Carr Freedom Defense Act protects Colorado’s state rights by ensuring Colorado does not aid or assist any federal overreach that would set up a registry for Muslims or other religious groups, create internment camps, or attempt to identify individuals by their race, religion, nationality, or immigration status and ethnicity—all of which go against our American and Colorado values and our U.S. and state Constitutions,” said Rep. Salazar, D-Thornton. “We’re not going to allow Colorado communities to be terrorized by federal overreach.”
HB17-1230 is named after Republican Colorado Governor Ralph Carr, who in response to the 1942 Executive Order signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt vigorously opposed the creation of the Japanese internment camps in Colorado. He is remembered for courageously stating: “An American citizen of Japanese descent has the same rights as any other citizen… If you harm them, you must first harm me.”
Needless to say, Ralph Carr was a different kind of Republican than the current crop that rolled out of their racist grandfather’s outhouse. Here’s state Rep. Phil Covarrubias trying to explain to everyone why a historically terrible idea is not a historically terrible idea.
“For anybody that has never been in the heat of combat, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and all of that was going on, there’s not time to ask questions and find out who’s a citizen and who’s not,” said Covarrubias, a former Marine who lives in Brighton. “It’s easy to sit here and say this stuff now. But if you’re in that moment, it looks a lot different than being able to be in a nice suit and tie.”
State Rep. Covarrubias was wearing what he considers a nice suit and tie at the time. So, the visual is kinda perfect. Obviously, people saw that and said wait, what?
He continued: “I hear people saying that we need to respect other people’s rights, and I agree with that, but what about them respecting our rights and our country and our laws? Because I'm not hearing that up here.”
Later on in the hearing, Covarrubias once again seemed to defend the mass internment of Japanese American citizens by pointing out that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. That attack, he said, was “what happened prior ... that kicked all this off.”
“I think we need to look at the Americans that are in fear from the terrorism and the things that we’ve seen over the last few years especially,” Covarrubias said. “Everybody's talking about the immigrants being in fear or the other people being in fear. What about our own people? What about Florida? What about San Bernardino? ... We need to take care of our home here and realize that we have plenty of our own citizens — citizens — that are in fear.”
In state Rep. Covarrubias’s defense, he’s an Islamophobic asshole. He says these things he said were taken out of context, so you can watch him say them right here.