Texas Congressman to Trump: Shove Border Wall “Up Your Ass”

*What he said. VL

---

By Abby Livingston, Texas Tribune (1.5 minute read)

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela took a poison pen to the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, in an open letter Monday morning.

“Mr. Trump, you’re a racist and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass,” he wrote in a lengthy missive to the real estate magnate.

Vela notes in the letter that he agreed with Trump on some policies, like improving veterans care, addressing Mexican drug cartels and deporting criminal felons who are in the country illegally. But then he savages Trump for his rhetoric on those of Mexican descent and his promise to build a wall on the southern U.S. border.

“While you would build more and bigger walls on the U.S.-Mexico border, I would tear the existing wall to pieces,” Vela wrote. “Why any modern-thinking person would ever believe that building a wall along the border of a neighboring country, which is both our ally and one of our largest trading partners, is frankly astounding and asinine.”

Vela then defended U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge overseeing litigation related to Trump’s education enterprise, Trump University, with fraud. Trump has questioned Curiel’s capacity for fairness based on his Mexican heritage. Curiel was born in Indiana.

Read more NewsTaco stories on Facebook. >> 

Vela then pointed out that his own family lineage in the United States goes back farther than Trump’s paternal grandfather.

“Before you dismiss me as just another ‘Mexican,’ let me point out that my great-great grandfather came to this country in 1857, well before your own grandfather,” he wrote. “His grandchildren (my grandfather and his brothers) all served our country in World War I and World War II. His great-grandson, my father, served in the U.S. Army and, coincidentally, was one of the first ‘Mexican’ federal judges ever appointed to the federal bench.”

“I will not presume to speak on behalf of every American of Mexican descent, for every undocumented worker born in Mexico who is contributing to our country every day or, for that matter, every decent citizen in Mexico,” he added.

This article was originally published in the Texas Tribune.

---

---

[Photo courtesy of Facebook/UsCongressmanFilemonVela]

Born in the early part of the twentieth century, George Washington Gómez is named after the American rebel and hero because his parents are certain their son will be a great man too. George, or Guálinto as he’s known, grows up in turbulent times. His family has lived for generations in what has become Texas. “I was born here. My father was born here and so was my grandfather and his father before him. And then they come, they come and take it, steal it and call it theirs,” his Uncle Feliciano rages.

The Texas Mexicans’ attempts to take back their land from the Gringos and the rinches—the brutal Texas Rangers—fail. Guálinto’s father, who never participated in the seditionist violence, is murdered in cold blood, and Feliciano makes a death-bed promise to raise his nephew without hatred.

Young Guálinto comes of age in a world where Mexicans are treated as second-class citizens. Teachers can beat and mistreat them with impunity, and most of his Mexican-American friends drop out of school at a young age. But the Gómez family insists that he continue his education, which he will need in order to do great things for his people. And so his school years create a terrible conflict within him: Guálinto alternately hates and admires the Gringo, loves and despises the Mexican. Written in the 1930s but not published until 1990, George Washington Gómez has become mandatory reading for anyone interested in Mexican-American literature, culture and history.

[cc_product sku=”paperback” display=”inline” quantity=”true” price=”true”]