DHS Stoops to Shocking Low in Racist Attack on Latina Congresswoman

Last week, Representative Delia Ramirez, a Guatemalan American representing Illinois’s 3rd district, spoke at the second Panamerican Congress in Mexico City. A snippet of her remarks has infuriated MAGA commentators, lawmakers, and even the Department of Homeland Security.

But the outrage stems from an apparent mistranslation by right-wing news site The Blaze, which reported that Ramirez said: “I’m a proud Guatemalan, before I’m an American.”

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.”

While the latter statement is oddly worded, making a direct translation difficult and leaving some ambiguity in Ramirez’s meaning, The Blaze’s version is evidently quite a leap (and also strips the remark of its context).

But, as Mark Twain is often falsely quoted as saying: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” The Blaze’s snippet and translation was shared far and wide in the MAGA-sphere.

Fox News published a story on it. Senator Mike Lee asked his followers on X, “Are you comfortable with this?” Representative Andy Ogles demanded that Ramirez be denaturalized, deported, and removed from the House Committee on Homeland Security, posting, “We know where her allegiances lie.” 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.”

As the bad-faith right-wing firestorm blazed, Ramirez issued a statement calling the attacks “a weak attempt to silence my dissent and invalidate my patriotic criticism of the nativist, white supremacist, authoritarians in government.”

“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,” Ramirez said.

This story has been updated.