LULAC Condemns the Choice of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General

November 18, 2016

WASHINGTON, DC - The League of United Latin American Citizens condemns President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be the Attorney General. The nominee’s well-known racist and anti-immigrant views make him extremely unfit to lead the U.S. Department of Justice.

Senator Sessions has already been rejected once by the Senate’s Judiciary Committee based on his racist statements as a U.S. Attorney. Since then, his racist and anti-immigrant statements have only grown more vociferous.

Sessions has been aggressively anti-immigrant throughout his political career; having proposed to build a border wall long before Donald Trump. He has received the lowest scores possible on both the NHLA and NAACP Congressional score cards and he has been praised by the white supremacist anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform as the most nativist Senator in Congress—a label that Sessions has embraced.

“President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Senator Sessions to be our Attorney General is unacceptable and should be rejected by the United States Senate,” stated LULAC National President Roger C. Rocha, Jr. “Mr. Trump has promised to bring our nation together, but the nomination of Senator Sessions to lead the Department of Justice will exacerbate racial divisions throughout the country and drive the American people further apart.”

“Senator Sessions’ ultra-conservative views have made him a pariah even in his own party,” stated LULAC National Executive Director Brent Wilkes. “Immigrant and Latino communities have long looked to the Department of Justice for the protection of their civil rights, yet the agency would become the dispenser of terror and racial intolerance should Jeff Sessions be confirmed.”

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The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.lulac.org.