MALDEF STATEMENT ON TRUMP VISIT TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

MALDEF

March 13, 2018

Los Angeles, CA - Please attribute the following statement on Donald Trump’s trip to Southern California today to Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF:

“Donald Trump’s visit to California, the latest ever in a term of office by a president in the modern age, quite appropriately begins with a visit to the perverse garden of border wall prototypes that his administration has sown in southern California. A colossal waste of government resources with the implicit threat of future multiples of unnecessary expenditures, the prototype garden is fertilized by all of the campaign lies guaranteeing that any wall would not be paid for by United States taxpayers. In such a surreal context, it seems appropriate to paraphrase Mother Goose:

Trump, Trump, quite the deficit jump,
How does your garden grow,
With overpriced barricades, and supremacist White House aides,
And nativist dog-whistles all in a row.

Donald Trump should know that his perverse garden is not welcome in California, a state that voted overwhelmingly against him in the November 2016 election. No hate in our state. MALDEF will continue to fight against the wasteful wall and the barrage of nativist policy and rhetoric continuously emanating from the White House, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security.”

Founded in 1968, MALDEF is the nation's leading Latino legal civil rights organization. Often described as the "Latino Legal Voice for Civil Rights in America" MALDEF promotes social change through advocacy, communications, community education, and litigation in the areas of education, employment, immigrant rights, and political access. For more information on MALDEF, please visit: www.maldef.org.