America The Counter-Productive

If you want to know why Republicans have now scrapped plans for immigration reform entirely, it's because their rabidly xenophobic base will crucify them for anything short of land mines, moats, army brigades and a 100-foot wall on the border to get rid of "those people".

More than 100 demonstrators forced buses full of immigrants to be rerouted from Murrieta, California nearly 70 miles south while hurling derisive chants toward them, KFMB-TV reported on Tuesday.

The protesters chanted “U-S-A, U-S-A,” and “Go back home” at the caravan, which was originally headed to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Murrieta carrying 140 undocumented immigrants, many of them women and children, who had entered the country after journeying from Central America. Federal officials put them on the buses after they were flown into San Diego from Texas earlier in the day.

“Send them back to their countries,” one unidentified male protester told KFMB. “Send them back to where they came from.”

It’s not clear if the demonstrators realized, however, that the purpose of facilities like the one in Murrieta is to help authorities prepare to send the immigrants leave the U.S., and to account for individuals who could pose flight risks. But because the protesters blocked the buses, they were shuttled out of the area and taken to a similar center in San Ysidro, close to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they arrived late Tuesday afternoon.

“This was a victory for the American people,” another protester was quoted as saying.

Congratulations, anti-immigration meatheads demanding undocumented immigrants be "sent back where they came from".  You blocked buses full of immigrants being processed so they could be deported out of the country, so they had to stay inside the country longer.

And no, Republicans have become the party of "us" versus "them", and "them" is a very long list of ethnicities, sexual orientations, religions, and beliefs.  I have been saying for years that Republican xenophobia would end any immigration deal, and in the end they've resigned themselves to that fact.

Demographics will be unforgiving.