Congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) were standing a long first-down pass apart in front of the Supreme Court building on Monday, each man commanding a microphone and armies of decibels. Gohmert is a particularly carnivorous hawk on border security. Gutierrez would just as soon see Gohmert and his ilk stuffed inside a cage. In the thick of it all, a swarm of protesters there to urge the Court to uphold President Obama’s executive actions on immigration cheered and jeered, depending on where they stood and which congressman they possibly could have discerned. I heard so many voices in my head that I was one digit, my thumb, from calling a therapist.
“God help us!” a raspy Gohmert blurted at one point through the overtaxed speakers. My thoughts exactly, such as they could think amid the noise.
The public is an animated bunch this election, and the evidence was concentrated in the street separating the Court from the U.S. Capitol. A dense mass of demonstrators occupied a city block of police-barricaded road, turning out in favor of Obama’s diktats that would protect around 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. The programs, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), are the subject of the Supreme Court case United States v. Texas. The justices heard arguments Monday.
With the recent passing of Justice Antonin Scalia and the ensuing scuffles over the selection of his replacement, the case has taken on added intrigue. Not only is there now a 4-4 split among “conservative” and “liberal” justices on the bench — the presidential contest and the significance of immigration in the race have made United States v. Texas the latest politically charged battle before the Supremes.
But it isn’t the only matter on the immigration lobby’s docket.
“We firmly believe that the Supreme Court will recognize that U.S. citizen children are equally entitled to have their parents, but this is only a temporary solution,” Karla de Anda, who sits on the board of directors of the Florida Immigration Coalition, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in a statement. “Our ultimate goal would be [to] achieve a comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, that allows families who were separated by deportations to reunite, and stops the mass criminalization and incarceration of our community.”
There was a similar feeling among the demonstrators Monday. Emma Guapo, who flew into Washington from Utah, said there was more to the unresolved questions of how government will handle illegal immigration than just the court case.
“We want the people here to have more rights, and for there to be more of a process,” Guapo, 27, told me. She said she does support a path to citizenship of some sort, but doesn’t expect a “magic” overnight solution — just one that allows people to work and rewards those who stay out of trouble.
“We want to earn it,” she said. Guapo, a graduate of Utah Valley University, noted that she was brought to the States from Mexico at age 14 and benefits from DACA.
She was also one of a number of young adults in attendance. And not all of them were there to protest in front of the Court.
A short distance to the west, a smattering of youth behind a police fence at the Capitol building railed against money in politics. Some of their like-minded cohorts protested on the Capitol steps, and law enforcement intermittently escorted a row of them off the premises. On such occasions, a boisterous, scruffy youngster in a matching teal shirt and shorts would gesture toward them and attempt to start a chant of “WE! LOVE! YOU!” It took a few times.
Many of the people there were part of a loose, recently affiliated network called Democracy Awakening. Their combined efforts with another group the last week, Democracy Spring, netted them hundreds of arrests as of this weekend. The individual organizations listed on Democracy Awakening’s website are too numerous to reproduce here. Suffice it to say that there was more than one labor group represented at the Capitol and more than one Greenpeace t-shirt among the participants.
One of them stood next to me as we surveyed a calf covered in golden tape. He was Conor Finnegan, a 24-year-old bearded filmmaker in a Yankees cap with a pack of Camels inside his left shirt pocket. I couldn’t figure for the life of me where he was from.
He said he traveled to D.C. this weekend after being galvanized by Bernie Sanders at a rally in New York City. Genial and well-spoken, he talked about the similarities he saw between his fellow youth and those demonstrating over immigration.
They’re in search of the American dream, he said, “and we don’t even have the American dream for ourselves.”
“We’re all disenfranchised,” he said.
So much so that he’s sympathetic to some of the people supporting Donald Trump’s populist message, voters who he’s hesitant “to write off”.
“We’re all angry about the same thing,” Finnegan said, noting specifically that Trump always says he isn’t beholden to moneyed interests and actually wants to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Given the anti-establishment sentiment that has gripped him and his allies, I asked him how many of his fellow travelers and protesters he’s encountered in Washington are backing Sanders. He said about 90 percent.
“No one here is a passionate Hillary supporter — if they even exist.”
