WASHINGTON — Complete with an angry photo of Donald Trump propped up on an easel, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) heralded the arrival of El Jefe Anaranjado — “orange chief — to Capitol Hill with a floor speech reminding the presumptive GOP nominee where his taco bowl came from.
Trump tweeted a photo on Cinco de Mayo of his ground beef and cheese creation in a crispy shell. “The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” he wrote.
Immigration groups including America’s Voice, Latino Victory Project, United We Dream and United Farm Workers delivered taco bowls to several GOP offices this morning to mark Trump’s meetings with House and Senate Republican leaders.
On the House floor, the co-chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ Immigration and Border Issues Task Force called Trump “the heavyweight, undisputed champion and leader of the Republican Party, the person who speaks for every single House Republican, the presidential nominee of the Republican Party.”
Gutierrez held today’s carry-out menu from the Senate cafeteria, which featured taco salad.
“You cannot make this stuff up. The Republicans love ‘the Hispanics’ soooooo much that they put taco salads on the menu so that we can honor the love and affection that their presidential nominee feels for each and every one of us, ‘the Hispanics,'” he said.
“And I am sure that love and respect extends to all the working men and women in our cafeterias, not just the ones who are part of ‘the Hispanics,’ but the other working men and women who are part of ‘the blacks,’ or ‘the Asians,’ or ‘the whites.'”
May is also Strawberry Festival Month at the cafeteria, the congressman noted.
“Now, let’s see if we can guess who picks the strawberries that will be served in the cafeterias, shall we, Mr. Speaker? I will venture to guess that every single strawberry that is served on yogurt or a piece of pound cake to members of Congress will have passed through the rough hands of an undocumented immigrant,” Gutierrez continued. “Whether it was growing them, picking them, packing them, shipping them, unloading them, or some other part of the process, Strawberry Festival Month really means undocumented farmworker month. We are all complicit. Any food you eat will have been touched by undocumented immigrant hands.”
Gutierrez noted that two years ago House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said the Dem was being “inflammatory” for saying that GOPs want to deport 11 million illegal immigrants.
“Now the standard bearer, the leader, the nominee, El Jefe Anaranjado, who is leading the party into the November election is calling for the mass deportation or removal of 11 million people. In detail. Out loud,” he said.
“So, as we eat our taco salads today or have a sweet delicious strawberry, I hope my colleagues chew on the words and keep in mind the philosophy and values your leader is espousing on the campaign trail on your behalf, the de facto head of the Republican Party. Just taste the immigrant labor, the hands of Mexicans and a lot of other people with and without papers that went into every morsel of food you taste today.”
Guiterrez added that his GOP colleagues should also think about “the nearly one million American-born Latino citizens who have turned 18 in the last year and the half-a-million more who will turn 18 before November,” the 25 percent increase in citizenship applications in the first quarter of the year, and “the more than 27 million Latino citizens like me who are your constituents, who are eligible to vote, and are fired up to vote more and more with each passing day.”
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