Outrage over the humanitarian crisis/slew of undocumented child immigrants fleeing their Central American home countries has reached a level such that any ol’ group of kids can now be mistaken for undocumented migrants, striking unwarranted fear and indignation into the hearts of Americans. No, please. Think of the children.
Arizona Republican congressional candidate Adam Kwazman was participating in a protest against the arrival of migrant children yesterday in Oracle, Arizona, when he got word that a bus was approaching. He snapped a photo of the bus he assumed was chock full of undocumented migrant children and tweeted it, saying “This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of the law.” (The tweet has since been deleted.)
He then gave an impassioned interview claiming that he was able to see the children and “the fear on their faces.”
But when Arizona-based reporter Brahm Resnik informed him that that bus did not have immigrants, but was actually a bus full of YMCA campers, a rather magnificent show of backpedaling began. Kwasman claimed that “those children were sad too,” which honest-to-god, I believe—putting glitter on rocks and going to a park but not being allowed to jump into the creek can be really damaging. While Kwasman continued to claim that “people are not happy down the line,” Kwasman did own up to his error, saying “if that was not correct, then it was a mistake.”
I hope this video will make your day like it made mine, although as funny as it is to watch an ignorant intolerance-mongering dude get schooled by the truth, it’s still depressing how much people are willing to cling to their cause as the foundation just crumbles. At least Kwasman apologized for the mix-up, and even though he’s basically thinking out loud, you got to give him some credit.
So to all the kids out there, please be careful when traveling in a school bus—you too may be profiled, heckled, and exploited for as the posterchildren of ignorance.
Image via AZ Central. Tweet screenshot via Politwoops.