The Department of Homeland Security went running with a viral — and dog-whistle-laden — mistranslation of a speech Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) partially gave in Spanish during a visit to Guatemala, wrote Robert McCoy in a scathing analysis for The New Republic published on Tuesday.
Ramirez, a progressive lawmaker whose parents were undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, gave the speech last week, during the second Panamerican Congress in Mexico City, and the origin of the mistranslation was the far-right outlet The Blaze.
That outlet, noted McCoy, “reported that Ramirez said: ‘I’m a proud Guatemalan, before I’m an American,’” which swiftly went viral on MAGA corners of social media. “A video of the event shows Ramirez, who began her speech in English, saying she wanted to conclude her remarks with a few words in Spanish (‘...quiero terminar diciendo unas palabras en español…‘), because she is ‘very proudly Guatemalan’ (‘...porque yo soy guatemalteca con mucho orgullo…‘). But, she continues, ‘Primero que soy americana’ —which translates roughly to ‘First, I am American.’”
This is peculiarly phrased, wrote McCoy, but the most reasonable interpretation would be the opposite of what The Blaze asserted.
Nonetheless, he continued, a number of far-right lawmakers, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), pushed the false translation as a “bad-faith right-wing firestorm blazed.”
The Trump administration also got involved.
“The DHS’s official X account shared the snippet with a Theodore Roosevelt quote about there being ‘no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.’”
Ramirez, for her part, has fought back against the attacks, stating, “Anyone who denies our claim on this country simply because we dare to honor our diverse heritage and immigrant roots only exposes how fragile and small-minded their own idea of America really is.”
All of this comes as Trump’s DHS has come under fire for increasingly draconian crackdowns on immigrants, from habeas-free deportations to foreign megaprisons, to the use of a brutal detention camp constructed in the Florida Everglades.