“Catch an Illegal Immigrant” contest at the University of Texas Aftermath

A conservative group at the University of Texas has canceled its planned “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” contest this week, saying the effort “was misguided and that the idea for the event was intentionally over-the-top in order to get attention for the subject.”

In a statement, Young Conservatives of Texas Chairman Lorenzo Garcia said members of his group feared they would have been punished or expelled if they went forward with the game on Wednesday. And he said the event might have put volunteers in physical danger.

Young Conservatives Chairman Lorenzo Garcia, former field director for Greg Abbott campaign. Garcia says his group canceled "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" contest on UT contest (Facebook posting on Young Conservatives of Texas site)

“After the University President and the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement released statements denouncing the event we planned as violating the university’s honor code, I spoke with our chapter’s members, and they are both concerned that the university will retaliate against them and that the protest against the event could create a safety issue for our volunteers.”

Garcia is a former field director of Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign. The Abbott campaign distanced itself from the event, saying Garcia left his paid job as a field representative a few weeks ago.

Garcia’s organization has held controversial events in the past — including an affirmative-action bake sale in which students were charged different amounts for baked goods depending on their race. In his statement, Garcia acknowledged that giving $25 gift cards to students who “caught” fellow students wearing “Illegal Immigrant” signs was a bad idea.

Announcement of the planned “Immigrant Hunt” prompted university officials, including President Bill Powers, to denounce the idea and to call on the student group to call off its contest. Garcia denied that the game was aimed at diminishing Mexican-Americans and said the Young Conservatives of Texas just wanted to create a debate on the issue of illegal immigration.

“The reactions of some who claim that YCT is creating a demeaning or degrading environment on campus have been truly disgraceful,” he said. “I have always viewed The University of Texas as a place where students could express their opinions—whether or not they were popular.

Even though our event will not go forward, UT students, our state, and our nation need to have a serious discussion and debate about the issue of illegal immigration. I believed that our event would spark this discussion on campus, and though we will no longer be holding the event, I hope that the publicity surrounding the event will create debate among students.”

In a statement, the university said it supports free speech rights of students but is happy the group canceled the event.

Opinion: Putting a perverse publicity stunt in perspective

Students at UT Austin

by Stephen A. Nuño, @StephenANuno 

 In the continuing learning process of how to act in a changing society, a conservative group at the University of Texas’ flagship university in Austin got a lesson in humility it will surely want to forget.

Young Conservatives of Texas were to hold a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” event this week, where club members would wander around campus “wearing signs that say, ‘illegal immigrant’, and students who capture them and take them to the Young Conservatives’ recruiting tables will get $25 gift certificates”.

This level of diaper-wearing attention-seeking by the group’s chairman, Lorenzo Garcia, would be embarrassing enough to any parent. Yet Garcia was desperately seeking attention for his sick publicity stunt, and the media gave Garcia what he was looking for.  A story on the prospect of “an illegal immigrant hunt” was bound to get clicks, so the media gave Garcia what he was looking for.

Yet it’s important in a democratic society to respond to the littleness of such ideas precisely because of its privileged source.

Insensitivity to human suffering is one thing, and promoting policies that needlessly contribute to human suffering is yet another. But reveling in that suffering by mocking those caught in the claws of our immigration system is a level of sociopathic behavior that can only be matched by the irony of the event being held at a university of immense privilege, in fact already a majority-minority school, by a kid with a Hispanic surname.

In fact, the same kid recently held an affirmative action bake sale.  Students were sold baked goods on a price scale where minorities paid less than whites and Asians, the message being that whites and Asians are being discriminated against by affirmative action policies.

One wonders what access to privilege students like Garcia are yearning for when the median wealth of whites is almost twenty times that of blacks, and whites outpace blacks in almost any socio-economic measurement imaginable.  Acknowledging our history of discrimination against minority groups is a small gesture by institutions of higher learning to consider in the admissions process, and the current gauntlet of depravity thrown at minority communities known as the “war on drugs” is yet another reason to fight for comprehensive admissions policies.

Our immigration policy is but another system of control over minorities, most of which who come here as a result of American foreign policy decisions that are impoverishing the homes of the immigrants among us we now resent, and Mr. Garcia finds so much joy in his perverse publicity stunt.

The response by the Greg Abbot for Governor campaign was to rightfully call this a “repugnant effort” and to distance itself from the Young Conservatives leader.

Garcia was forced to cancel the event when the President of UT-Austin voiced his denunciation of the young conservatives’ proposed stunt and the Office of Diversity and Community Engagement objected to the event by calling it a violation of the student honor code.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, but only because social media and our institutions of information compelled others into the admission that the sources of power are changing.

Lesson learned, for now.


Stephen A. Nuño, Ph.D., NBC Latino contributor and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. He is currently writing a book on Republican outreach into the Latino Community.