A Republican Oklahoma legislator has proposed a racist bill targeting Hispanic gang members.
The bill, H.B. 3133, authored by state Rep. Justin Humphrey this legislative session, said a member of a gang who “is of Hispanic descent” and convicted of “gang-related offenses” would be categorized as a terrorist under state law. The bill has been called unconstitutional by another state legislator and has received backlash online for singling out Hispanic people.
Following the backlash, Humphrey clarified to local news outlet KOKH that his goal with the bill was to target Mexican cartels.
“People are making a big issue out of the fact that I used the word Hispanic. I probably did use that when I was originally writing this because it is Hispanic gangs that are mainly what we’re talking about, the Mexican cartels, two of them,” Humphrey said, adding that ″illegal″ immigrants bring fentanyl and human trafficking to the U.S.
Humphrey, who worked at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for 20 years before his controversial political career, has also claimed that “Chinese nationals” are responsible for the fentanyl crisis, NBC News reported. H.B. 3133 does not mention any other ethnic group besides people of Hispanic descent.
“I will go back to change that language to say undocumented, here illegally, something like that,” Humphrey continued to KOKH.
Democratic state Sen. Michael Brooks told local news outlet KFOR that the bill violated people’s constitutional rights.
“All groups have a constitutional right to due process and also a constitutional right not to be discriminated against or to be singled out,” said Brooks. “Nobody is in favor, or I don’t think there’s an appetite anymore for more divisive politics. Personally, I think his constituents deserve better than this type of legislation.”
Humphrey has recently proposed other radical bills, including one that would punish students who identify as furries in schools and another that would require abortion patients to get the permission of the fetus’s father. He’s also been criticized for saying that transgender people “have a mental illness” in defense of an anti-trans bill.