The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was called out for blatant racism after referring Democratic Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York as an "illegal immigrant" shortly after he delivered a Spanish-language response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address to Congress.
Espaillat, a Dominican-American, has been transparent about his family’s experience overstaying their visas when he was a child, before eventually obtaining green cards and his own path to citizenship. Now a U.S. citizen for decades and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Espaillat has proudly described himself as a “former undocumented immigrant turned progressive Congressman.”
The Spanish-language rebuttal to President Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday night placed significant emphasis on Trump's immigration policy. Espaillat specifically criticized a recent executive order establishing English as the national language and efforts to restrict emergency aid.
He said, translated from Spanish:
"My people, although we have been here for 20 generations, 20 years or 20 days, we all came to the United States of America for the American dream — the possibility to achieve a better life and create a better future for our children by working hard, embracing diversity and taking the opportunity this great nation gives us all."
Espaillat further accused Trump of fostering an "environment of fear within the immigrant community" after the president devoted parts of his address to emphasizing his immigration priorities. These included his declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, the deployment of military forces there, and the arrest rates tied to border enforcement.
The following day, the NRCC issued a now deleted tweet:
"Democrats literally chose an illegal immigrant to give their response to President Trump's address. Predictably, this radical called Trump's presidency a "reign of terror." Democrats couldn't be more disconnected from the American people."
You can see it below.
The NRCC's racist remarks were swiftly called out by some of his Democratic colleagues.
Others have also followed suit.
In remarks to reporters Thursday, Espaillat said that the Republican Party was “invaded by xenophobes that think that anybody that doesn’t look like them is an illegal.”
He added:
"This is tragic and unfortunate, and because of that, I think I got a lot of support from all over the country calling them out for being a bunch of xenophobes."
Noting that he had not received any outreach from the NRCC or Republican lawmakers following the post on X, he recounted to reporters how he came to the U.S. as a child with his parents on a visitor's visa:
"We overstayed our visa. We then adhered to the path that the law provided us, which was to go back to the Dominican Republic, get our green card, came back as a green card holder, became a U.S. citizen. And now, I’m a member of Congress. What a great American story."
A spokesman for the NRCC defended its post, saying that "Democrats caring more about policing words and fighting facts instead of policing our border and fighting crime shows just how out of touch they are.”
The attacks on Espaillat come amid growing concerns following Trump’s request for funding from Congress to launch "the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower,"—a reference to 1954's "Operation Wetback," a term widely condemned as racist. The U.S. government estimates that the operation led to the roundup of more than a million Mexican immigrants, along with some U.S. citizens.
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