The nativist guru in the US Senate
by digby
I wrote about Trump’s immigration plan and the man who inspired both him and Walker to take it to the next level at Salon this morning. An excerpt:
Walker rushed to the microphone to reiterate his earlier endorsement of draconian immigration laws and ensure that everyone knew he had been there first. Walker is on board with the repeal of birthright citizenship as well, which is unsurprising since his immigration guru is the same senator who’s been advising Trump — the Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Refugees, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.
Sessions has been flogging the repeal of birthright citizenship since at least 2010, when he was quoted saying:
“I’m not sure exactly what the drafters of the (14th) amendment had in mind, but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen.”
Sessions is a former judge so he’s been to law school and knows very well what the drafters of the 14th Amendment had in mind. It was adopted in the wake of the Civil War in order to ensure that people like Jeff Sessions and states like Alabama would not be able to deny citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law to former slaves and immigrants.
Ever since then, people like Jeff Sessions and states like Alabama have been trying to find ways to circumvent the spirit and letter of the Amendment.
Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions to the federal bench, but he ran into a snag in the Senate when four DOJ lawyers testified that, as U.S. Attorney, Sessions had a bit of a problem with racism: He had told people that the NAACP and the ACLU were un-American, communist organizations, which had “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” He also said that he wished he didn’t have to prosecute civil rights cases at all. He became only the second nominee in 48 years whose nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
However, he got the last laugh in 1996, when he won a seat in the Senate for himself, and eventually landed on that very same Judiciary Committee, with many of same senators who had thwarted his dream of a federal judgeship.
Perhaps Sessions greatest revenge came last term, when he helped lead the crusade against President Obama’s nominee to head the civil rights division of the DOJ, Debo Adegbile, arguing Adegbile couldn’t be trusted because he once represented a client convicted of the 1981 murder of a police officer. In one of the most smug and sanctimonious comments in the history of the Senate, Sessions declared that his opposition was based upon the fact that the civil rights division “must protect the civil rights of all Americans” and not be used as a tool to further the political agenda of “special interest groups.”
Chutzpah doesn’t begin to describe it.
But all of that is fairly standard Southern-conservative behavior. Some people will never stop fighting the Civil War. Where Sessions is really making his impact on the future is on immigration policy.
Last January, he put together a policy paper called “The Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority,” which forms the basis for Trump and Walker’s plans and will likely influence the rest of the candidates’ platforms as well.
Read on. There’s lots more about out history of deportation of Mexicans and Jeff Sessions’ obsession with reversing the 14th amendment. He’s quite the piece of work.