Sen. Tim Kaine said President Trump’s tweets telling minority representatives to “go back” to their home countries violates federal anti-discrimination laws.
The Virginia Democrat, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, cited immigrants’ employment rights listed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“The EEOC cites ‘go back to where you came from’ as a classic form of discrimination that violates civil rights. The President’s bigoted words are so contrary to who we are as a country that we literally have laws against them,” Kaine tweeted Tuesday.
The EEOC cites “go back to where you came from” as a classic form of discrimination that violates civil rights. The President’s bigoted words are so contrary to who we are as a country that we literally have laws against them. pic.twitter.com/FcD1TcKcKE
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) July 16, 2019
Over the weekend, Trump stirred controversy when he targeted a group of minority women who are liberal freshmen in Congress by tweeting, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
The liberal “squad” with whom he is engaged in a war of words comprises Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. Three of them were born in the U.S., and Omar was born in Somalia.
In a unmistakable parallel, the EEOC guidance against a hostile work environment based on national origin stems from a 2007 legal case in which evidence showed a Muslim car salesman of Indian descent was told that he should “just go back where [he] came from.”
Eric Bachman, a former Justice Department Civil Rights Division prosecutor, told ABC News that the president’s tweets would be “as close to a slam-dunk discriminatory claim as you can get” if he sent them as the boss of a private company.
The House passed a resolution condemning Trump’s tweet on Tuesday, with just four Republican votes and the backing of one independent, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who left the GOP earlier this month because he dislikes Trump.
