The pro-amnesty activists who interrupted and chanted during Tuesday afternoon’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions were self-defeating and disrespectful, according to at least one of the members on the panel.
“They are absolutely defeating their cause and more importantly they are showing a disrespect for this country and its rules and its laws,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) told Breitbart News during a break in the hearing.
“You know we have been pretty generous, this president has been generous — whether he did the right thing or not — but to come into a hearing like this and to disrupt the hearing shows a sense of entitlement that is unfortunate,” he continued.
He added that he hoped the hearing would end up being a precursor to a lawsuit or other legislation beyond the current discussions of using funding mechanisms to confront Obama’s actions or a bill from Rep. Ted Yoho rejecting the actions.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), on the other hand, expressed sympathy for the protesters.
“Obviously we like good order during hearings but these are individuals who have felt the brunt of an irrational immigration system for some years and I am sure they are very frustrated,” Lofgren told Breitbart during the break.
The California lawmaker — who worked for years with a bipartisan working group of lawmakers to achieve immigration reform — lamented that the House GOP has not moved forward with comprehensive immigration reform and during the hearing expressed support for what she called Obama’s “lawful” actions.
“They’ve had a long time to pass a law. I can’t think of anything I could have done more to make it easy for them to do it,” she said.
Tuesday’s hearing is considered the first step of the Judiciary Committee’s oversight of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.