Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) is facing aggressive attacks from her Republican colleagues and other right-wingers over recent comments she made about her Guatemalan heritage.
Last week, Ramirez had traveled to Mexico City, along with other members of congress, to attend an event at the second annual Panamerican Congress held in the Mexican capital. Speaking from a podium during her visit, a video clip shows the Illinois Democrat at one point expressing pride in her Guatemalan ancestry, saying the following in Spanish, which essentially translates to English as: “Let me ‘finish by saying a few words in Spanish’ because I’m a ‘proud Guatemalan before I am an American.’”
Republicans have expressed outrage over Ramirez’s comments after a seven-second clip of her remarks from the event made rounds on social media.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security shared the short clip of Ramirez speaking to its official account on X, formerly Twitter, with a quote attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt that read, in part: “We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.”
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) misrepresented Ramirez’s remarks in a post on X, by accusing the Illinois representative of saying in the clip that she “puts Guatemala before the U.S.”
“She’s currently the congresswoman for 720K+ Americans & is supposed to represent their interests on Capitol Hill,” he wrote. “Don’t run for Congress if you’re going to put another country first. This is common sense.”
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, told reporters, per C-Span, on Wednesday that he thought Ramirez’s comments were “disgusting.”
And earlier this week, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) called for Ramirez to be deported. “Denaturalize, deport, and kick her off Homeland Committee. We know where her allegiances lie,” he wrote on X.
Ogles’ post garnered nearly 30,000 “Likes” on X, with social media users — including MAGA social media influencer who goes by the name of Gunther Eagleman — joining him in calling for her to be deported.
Ramirez, however, was born in Chicago to Guatemalan immigrants. And as Paul A. Gowder, professor of law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, previously emphasized to HuffPost, “Birthright citizenship is defined in the Constitution.”
“The court made clear that the only way an American citizen can lose their citizenship is if they voluntarily renounce it,” he said, citing Afroyim v. Rusk, a Supreme Court case from 1967.
Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) has responded to right-wing attacks over comments she made about the pride she has in her Guatemalan heritage.
Ramirez, who became the first Latina to represent the Midwest in Congress when she was elected in 2022, has responded to the attacks.
She released a statement on Monday saying: “Let’s call it what it is: today’s attacks are a weak attempt to silence my dissent and invalidate my patriotic criticism of the nativist, white supremacist, authoritarians in government.”
“It is the definition of hypocrisy that members of Congress — who betray their oath each day they enable Trump — are attacking me for celebrating my Guatemalan-American roots,” she said. “No one questions when my white colleagues identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, or Ukrainian-American to honor their ancestry.”
“I’ve consistently expressed pride in my heritage and history — a pride also often reflected in the origin stories of my colleagues,” she continued, before later emphasizing that honoring her Guatemalan ancestry only “strengthens my commitment to America.”
“I am the daughter of immigrants and the daughter of America. I am both Chapina and American,” she added. “I am from both Guatemala and Chicago, Illinois.”
Kari J. Winter, a professor of American studies at the University at Buffalo whose expertise includes gender, feminism, race and class, said that MAGA politicians are “enraged by the presence of Hispanic people in the United States.”
“Rep. Andy Ogles illustrates how out of control the anti-American, anti-U.S. Constitution MAGA extremists have become,” she told HuffPost. “Because Ramirez expressed pride in her heritage as a Guatemalan-American, Ogles ranted that she, an American citizen born in Chicago and elected to the U.S. Congress, should be stripped of her citizenship and deported.”
“As long as ICE agents and politicians like Ogles are allowed to terrorize people at their whim, no one in this country is safe,” she continued.
Knowledge about our ancestors is ‘foundational to our humanity,’ Winter said.
Speaking about the uproar over Ramirez’s comments, Winter pointed out that “virtually everyone living in the United States in the 21st century has multifaceted ancestral roots.”
“We need and deserve to have accurate information about our personal and national histories,” she said. “Because knowledge from and about our ancestors is foundational to our humanity.”
Winter said “oppressive regimes attempt to sever oppressed groups” from knowledge about, and pride in their ancestors. They also try to “deny them the right to pass their heritage to their descendants.”
“In the Americas, white supremacists have perpetrated both physical and cultural genocide by killing, enslaving and imprisoning people of color while also attempting to destroy their languages, stories, rituals, music and foodways,” she said. “The Trump administration is actively working to purge women and people of color from their jobs and social benefits while also purging records of their achievements from government websites.”
Winter said that Ramirez hit the nail on the head in her response to the attacks when she called out the hypocrisy of Republicans who enable Trump.
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“One of the worst fibs to spring from the MAGA cauldron of disinformation and propaganda is their claim to support free speech,” Winter said. “They are doing everything in their power to dismantle and punish the spread of accurate information.”
“Like a lighthouse rising above a tide of barbarity, Rep. Delia C. Ramirez is a beacon of light illuminating the patriotic path of resistance to tyranny,” Winter later said. “We need to speak truth to power.”
