In a House Judiciary Committee hearing on border security, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) issued a blistering response to Democrat Ranking Member Jerry Nadler, who used his opening remarks to malign Republicans as racist over their desire for the U.S. to enforce its immigration laws. “But this is actually not about race. This is actually an issue of public safety. And if I call this, if I call this an invasion, sir, I'm not racist. I can assure you I'm not racist,” said Hunt. “What I can assure you is that I wanna make sure that Fentanyl doesn't indiscriminately kill any race, religion, color, or creed because Fentanyl doesn't care where you're from. Fentanyl doesn't care about race. Fentanyl kills indiscriminately.” Nadler said in his opening statement that the first hearing on the border would “showcase the racist tendencies of the extreme MAGA Republican wing of the party, that seeks to close the border to refugees from places like Cuba and Venezuela.” Nadler sarcastically added, “It almost makes me miss their usual obsession with conspiracy theories and the FBI.” Hunt excoriated Nadler and Democrats for their constant focus on race, and their near-constant focus on using racism as a “scapegoat.” Hunt continued:A congressional Republican is censuring his Democratic colleagues over what he says is their constant use of false allegations of racism to avoid substantive discussions on policy issues during official proceedings.
Now there's been a break in the dam and that's pretty obvious. Because a couple of years ago, of course we had some problems, but it wasn't amplified to the level that we are seeing every single day. And the reason why we have to be careful with what we call and what we deem racist moving forward in the future is because we start to lose focus on what the actual problem is. This administration, the Democrat party, unfortunately, uses race as a scapegoat for everything. And as somebody that wants to make sure that we do attack racist issues when they do occur, we can't be the boy who cried wolf and blame racism all the time. I am here to hold this administration accountable to understand that there are issues of race that need to be addressed, and sir, this ain't one of them. I applaud some of your actions in El Paso. It sounds like you're doing some great things, but I'm gonna tell you as being born and raised in Texas, living in Houston, we have a problem. And this problem has precipitated over the course of the past two years. That is a fact. I get working together, I get reaching across the aisle, but this morning I can't believe that we had one hour debate over rather or not we should say the pledge of allegiance before we convene every day. One hour. That, to me, is antithetical to the point of this meeting today. I implore you all to be careful with using race because your son's no longer here. And I'm sorry, there's a hundred thousand sons and daughters that are no longer here because of Fentanyl last year.
