A Republican state lawmaker from Kansas suggested yesterday during a meeting for controlling feral hogs that undocumented immigrants should be treated in the same fashion, shot dead from a helicopter.
“It looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works maybe we have found (a solution) to our illegal immigration problem,” Rep. Virgil Peck said.
Peck says he was “only joking” and refused to apologize for his comments saying he “was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person.”
But his violent remarks come amid a high profile attack committed by an extremist that targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who is still recovering from a gunshot wound to the head. In a separate case, also in Arizona, a deadly home invasion against a Hispanic family was carried out by a former member of the Minutemen group. Peck’s comments have been condemned for potentially inciting further violence and bloodshed.
The Giffords attack left 6 people dead and the attack on the Flores family by a former member of the Minutemen group, a border vigilante group accused of racism, ended in the deaths of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores (who pleaded for her life with her killer before being shot point blank) and her father.
“It was with utter dismay that I read Kansas State Representative Virgil Peck’s comments yesterday before the Kansas House Appropriations Committee. Speaking of human beings like animals and implying gun violence as an acceptable course of action crosses a line that his own party and his own peers should not tolerate,” U.S. Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez (D-TX), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said today in a press release. “As the Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus I call on the Kansas and National Republican Parties to denounce his comments and demonstrate to the American people that this kind of speech will not be tolerated.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, also weighed in today and called for Peck to step down from office.
“Representative Peck’s comments about shooting immigrants and likening them to hogs are an outrageous dehumanization of hardworking Kansas residents,” stated Margaret Moran, LULAC National President. “His despicable comments set a new low in the hostile and xenophobic political attacks against America’s immigrant communities.”
Violent attacks against immigrants and Hispanics have been on the rise and reported by La Plaza since last year.
“It’s at least plausible that the clamorous anti-immigrant hysteria demonizing people of Hispanic descent nationwide may have played a role in tipping an already unbalanced mind over the edge into violence,” the Baltimore Sun said in an editorial back in August after the killing of an Ecuadorian immigrant in what was labeled a hate crime.
Somos Republicans, a GOP Hispanic group, released a statement yesterday demanding an apology from Peck and saying such comments could “push some unstable people ‘over the edge.’”
“Hasn’t Mr. Peck learned from the mistakes of Sarah Palin when she put what appeared to be gun sight cross-hairs over our Congresswoman, Gabby Gifford’s district … In a time of extreme tension and occasional violence over illegal immigration, such as the slaughter of a Mexican-American family in Arizona including a nine-year old girl, allegedly by Minutemen, elected officials should refrain from the use of violent metaphors,” read the statement.
Bad bad bad!!! BAD
How disgusting. I can’t stand hearing about this kind of thing anymore. People like this guy have no place in elected office.
What a horrible statement!!!. Maybe what this Kansas Republican needs is to become an illegal alien in another country, and then he would be the one hunted. Not even the hogs deserve to be shot!
Dumb ass!
Illegal Immigrants have no right to be in America. The 14th “Anchor Baby” Amendment needs an amendment in and of itself. Though Peck’s comments were insensitive, I find it appalling that illegal immigrants continue to tip the scales in our legislation. No other country in the world would tolerate that (and NO that isn’t what makes America great).