ENFORCEMENT ADVOCATE: MEDIA, BUSINESS COMMUNITY, REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR DECEIVE THE PUBLIC
by Sharon Rondeau
(Jul. 17, 2017) — [Editor’s Note: This article is a continuation of our interview with D.A. King, an immigration-enforcement advocate and president of The Dustin Inman Society based in Marietta, GA.]
The Society has dedicated itself to “educating the public and our elected officials on the consequences of illegal immigration, our unsecured borders and the breakdown of the rule of law in our Republic.” Of its efforts, King told us that “Georgia media refuses to cover our work or the issue.” The group relies on donations, which King said are deterred by its 501(c)4 rather than 501(c)3 status.
The organization was founded in 2005 and named after 16-year-old Dustin Inman, who was killed in Georgia by an illegal-alien driver with a criminal history and a North Carolina driver’s license while Dustin and his parents were on their way to a fishing trip for Fathers’ Day weekend in 2000.
Billy and Kathy Inman were so seriously injured by the impact of Gonzalo Harrell-Gonzalez’s vehicle that they had to remain hospitalized during their only child’s funeral. (The Post & Email’s interview with Billy Inman, published last month in two parts, is here and here.) From the 62 mph rear-and collision, both parents suffered concussions, with Kathy sustaining permanent brain and spinal injuries requiring daily, specialized care and rendering her unable to return to her promising career as a manager at the Kroger’s grocery-store chain.
A GoFundMe campaign was launched to assist the Inmans with Kathy’s ongoing medical expenses and extraordinary needs, the bulk of which has fallen to Billy to carry out.
King told The Post & Email that his concern with illegal-alien immigration to the United States arose after the 9/11 attacks in New York City; Washington, DC and Shanksville, PA in which nearly 3,000 people were killed. As with Kathy Inman, many sustained life-changing injuries.
Of the immigration status of the 19 9-11 hijackers and co-conspirators, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported:
According to authorities, all of the hijackers who committed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were foreigners. All of them entered the country legally on a temporary visa, mostly tourist visas with entry permits for six months. Although four of them attended flight school in the United States, only one is known to have entered on an appropriate visa for such study, and one entered on an F-1 student visa. Besides the four pilots, all but one of the terrorists entered the United States only once and had been in the country for only three to five months before the attacks.
The four pilots had been in the United States for extended periods, although none was a legal permanent resident. Some had received more than one temporary visa, most of which were currently valid on September 11, but at least three of them had fallen out of status and were, therefore, in the United States illegally.
The New York Times wrote that “All of the Sept. 11 attackers entered the United States using tourist, business or student visas. Since then, among attackers claiming or appearing to be motivated by extremist Islam, only one would have needed a visa to enter the United States at the time of the attack.“
In 2003, King began to separate himself from the insurance agency he had owned and operated, spending an increasing amount of time in the area of advocacy for enforcing existing immigration laws. He has appeared on television with Univision’s Jorge Ramos and on NPR as well as written columns for a number of publications.
In 2006, King accompanied four members of Georgia’s legislature at their own expense to a location on the border between the U.S. and Mexico in Chochise County, AZ to observe conditions firsthand. According to the Society website, one resident told the visitors that illegal aliens could be seen “hiding and sleeping in her and her 90-something Mom’s yard on a regular basis.”
King’s efforts include having worked with Georgia state legislators to craft a 2011 bill, HB 87, which passed and was signed by Gov. Nathan Deal requiring that employers verify a person’s citizenship status prior to hiring. King said that in the months leading up to its passage, a concerted effort was launched by the press to convince the public to believe that if the bill were to pass, the resulting dearth of agricultural workers would usher in the importation of produce from other countries at higher prices, replacing Georgia-grown fruits and vegetables.
Notwithstanding that legislative accomplishment, King said that the law is considered “a joke” because the “E-Verify” provision remains widely unenforced.
In 2012, the city of Atlanta stopped accepting Mexican identification cards by changing a local ordinance, a move King applauded.
King himself claims, and is invoked by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as having played a role in jettisoning the nomination of Judge Dax Lopez, a former Board member of the Georgia organization GALEO, for a position on the Georgia Supreme Court as well as to the federal bench when nominated by Barack Obama in 2015.
In 2013, The New York Times termed King a “militant,” devoting a significant portion of its article to his efforts both in Georgia and on the federal level to defeat the then-contemplated “immigration reform” bill passed by the U.S. Senate. Rejected by then-Speaker of the House John Boehner, the bill did not receive a vote in the lower congressional chamber, much to Obama’s chagrin.
King told The Post & Email that Georgia has a strong pro-illegal-alien lobby spearheaded by the agricultural industry, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. He has named the media as a major player in advocating for the abrogation of federal and state laws pertaining to illegal aliens in the state.
“Most people don’t know that the agriculture industry is the only industry in this country which has its own visa to import an unlimited number of legal foreign workers to work in the farming industry,” King said. “It’s called an H2A visa, and with it growers can bring in an unlimited, no-ceiling amount of foreign, legal labor. The reason they don’t use it — and they made it clear during discussions of HB 87 — is that they have to pay, by federal law which is actually enforced, a reasonable wage and provide three meals a day and adequate housing to the laborers. So it is much cheaper and easier to hire the black-market labor.”
He continued:
H2A is a temporary visa. The reason that the far left doesn’t want anybody to know about it is that you don’t get a lot of potential voters out of temporary visa-holders. I wrote a couple of op-eds to help people understand that there is an H2A visa. The Ag industry hates me. There’s not a lot of difference between the way many growers regard illegal-alien labor now and the way growers regarded slave labor prior to the American Civil War.
A month ago, just prior to the special election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district where King happens to reside, King observed in the Macon Telegraph that the issue of illegal aliens was not a topic in the contest between former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel (R) and political newcomer Jon Ossoff (D). On June 16, King wrote:
The campaign to replace Dr. Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th District has become rather comical — and obvious. In a state with more illegal aliens than Arizona, the immigration issue is apparently radioactive and avoided at all costs — by both candidates and the happy-to-oblige media.
This, despite the fact that an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll from last week showed that 67 percent of 6th District voters are more than a little concerned about illegal immigration.
Both the Democrats and the U.S. and Georgia Chamber have fought tooth and nail against immigration enforcement, including mandatory use of E-Verify.
The Post & Email’s interview with King was conducted on June 20, the day of the special election. At the time, he told us:
Right now we have Jon Ossoff, who is a Nancy Pelosi Democrat, hiding out as a moderate until the election is over, running against former Secretary of State, former gubernatorial candidate and former U.S. Senate candidate Karen Handel. Karen Handel is largely financed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, two anti-enforcement agencies which fight tooth-and-nail against enforcement of our immigration laws, particularly E-Verify. Immigration in Georgia is not an issue in this election.
At the end of the 2017 legislative session, HB452, requiring the publication of illegal-alien criminal data in Georgia, was passed and signed by Gov. Nathan Deal, taking effect on July 1. Writing in InsiderAdvantage on Sunday, King provided an explanation as to how the bill’s provisions are expected to benefit Georgians in two ways: by sending information on illegals compiled by federal authorities to the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association and “to post it on the GBI website to warn the public about newly released, dangerous criminal foreigners in their communities.”
Although Deal signed both the 2011 and 2017 pro-enforcement legislation, King maintains that the two-term Republican governor has been deceiving Georgians by denying that his administration provides drivers’ licenses to illegals. In a blog post at The Dustin Inman Society dated July 13, 2017, King provided a link to the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) which states, in part:
If a non-US citizen establishes residency in Georgia, he or she must obtain a Georgia driver’s license within thirty (30) days. A non-US citizen would be considered a resident of Georgia if he or she meets any of the following criteria:
- If a person accepts employment or engages in trade in Georgia, and enrolls his or her children in private or public school within ten days after the commencement of employment; or
- If a person has been present in the state for 30 or more days.
The pre-requisites for issuance of a Georgia driver’s license include passing tests relating to vision, knowledge of our traffic laws (including road signs), and driving skills. Also, to be issued a Georgia’s driver’s license, the driver must be a United States citizen or have lawful status in the United States. Georgia law does not allow non-US citizen, non-resident drivers to operate a motor vehicle if he or she does not have a lawful status in the United States.
King contested DDS’s statements with his own:
The state of Georgia is run by Republicans, and it has been for ten years. Literally, every constitutional office in this state right now is held by a Republican. We’re in a lame-duck term of Gov. Nathan Deal. Something that did not happen when the Democrats were in control but is happening now is that the state of Georgia is issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens. About 30,000 illegal aliens now have a Georgia driver’s license or a Georgia official photo ID card or both. That includes illegal aliens who have already been convicted of crimes, some violent, and are already under deportation orders. This is a very closely-guarded secret by the Georgia media and the Georgia legislature. There are still Georgia legislators who do not know what I just told you. Most Georgians have no idea that Georgia is issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens. The Georgia media, led by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has done an exceptionally efficient job at keeping this secret. This has been happening at a great increase since 2012.
It gets deeper than this. The governor appoints a commissioner of a department called the Department of Drivers’ Services. It’s the Georgia version of a DMV. The legislative liaison from DDS has been noted and posted on my website in writing multiple times telling legislators that DDS is not issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal or undocumented immigrants. Further, he has put in writing that DDS is not giving drivers’ licenses to non-citizens who lack “legal status.” There’s a difference, allegedly, between “legal or lawful status” and “lawful presence.
The DDS will send back a request from sitting state senators about how many drivers’ licenses have been issued to non-citizens, they will say directly in writing that they are not issuing drivers’ licenses, again, and I quote, to “illegal or undocumented immigrants.” It is a lie; it is a lie perpetuated by the media, and it is done because our government is run here in Georgia by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the Metro Atlanta chamber of commerce, and Big Agriculture directly through the office of Gov. Nathan Deal.
