If You Can’t Beat Em’, Deport Em’!
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 16 Feb, 2026

Texas Republicans’ retort to criticism makes “I know you are but what am I?” look high brow.

This past week, a two year-old clip resurfaced of Chinese American Texas State Rep. Gene Wu speaking about race.

The far-right Twitter account End Wokeness, posted the excerpt from Wu’s 2024 interview with journalist and activist Jose Antonio Vargas along with the caption “Rep. Gene Wu (D) goes mask off: “Non-whites share the same oppressor and we are the majority now.  We can take over this country.””

A recent poll show where each candidate for Texas AG currently stands

But anyone who watches the video knows that that’s not what he said.  Here’s the transcript. 

“I always tell people the day the Latino, African American, Asian and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning.  Because we are the majority in this country now.  We have the ability to take over this country and do what is needed for everyone.  And to make things fair.  But the problem is our communities are divided — they’re completely divided.”

When asked who the “oppressor” was Wu specified that he was referring to Republicans in general.

In 2022, Indian American Nikki Haley called for the Deportation of Senator Raphael Warnock, a Black man

In my personal opinion, two things are simultaneously true:

1) Wu’s statement was accurate.

2) Wu’s statement was divisive.

I can’t fault Republicans —particularly Whites — for taking offense to the clip.  Nobody likes being called an oppressor. 

And I think that the many who disagree with Wu, particularly in his own state of Texas, are well within their rights to push back against him on the merits of his arguments. 

But that’s not what they did. Rather, a number of Wu’s critics have responded by pledging to deport him, despite the fact that he is an American citizen.

And the racist backlash is not simply coming from random crazies in internet comments sections, though they have also come out of the woodwork in the thousands.

It was Aaron Reitz, a candidate for Texas’s next Attorney General who posted on X: “As Attorney General, I want to see [Wu] de-naturalized.”

He went on to make the unsubstantiated claim that the Congressman “likely concealed his anti-American sentiment throughout his citizenship app process—the details of which are conspicuously absent from the public record.”  “Wu is a subversive whose citizenship should be revoked,” the post concluded. 

The latest poll of the Attorney General race for the Republican primary put Reitz in fourth place at just 6%.  But he is not just some fringe “also-ran” candidate.  He has the endorsement of outgoing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 

In the endorsement, Paxton referred to Reitz as “loyal, fearless, trusted, and relentlessly committed to the Rule of Law, adding “He has already proven himself as a defender of Texas, of Texans’ rights, and of the Constitution.  That’s why President Trump called him a ‘true MAGA attorney’ and a ‘warrior for our Constitution.”

But for as repugnant as Reitz’s comment was, those of another candidate in the Attorney General’s race, State Senator Mayes Miller—who is polling second with 23%, may have gone even further:

“Gene Wu showing us why only those born in America should be eligible to run for office.  Gene fought to let communist China buy Texas out from underneath us.”

My immediate reaction was to wonder how Miller’s proposed eligibility requirements would affect the state’s Junior Senator Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada.  But I quickly reasoned that Miller and company were likely not referring to countries like Canada.  Their ire appears to be reserved for people of color.  Ironically, such sentiments seem to validate the very point that Wu was making.

For what it’s worth, Cruz, who responded by stating that the “Democrat party is built on bigotry” has put his support behind frontrunner Chip Roy, who has called for the Texas house to “strip [Wu] of any power."

Free Speech Absolutism

This type of behavior is not necessarily anything new.  “Build the wall” became a common racist chant against minorities—heard even at middle and high school school sporting events—when Donald Trump first declared his candidacy for President over a decade ago. 

And of course iterations of “go back to your own country” are as old as the United States itself. 

These threats are particularly rich coming from a political ideology that claims to be driven by free speech absolutism.  Modern conservatives purport to be obsessed with civil discourse and debate. 

Yet when confronted with speech that they disagree with, their go to—threats of deportation — is quite literally an attempt to silence the speaker rather than engage with the point on its merits.

It’s the equivalent of the high school bully who, devoid of a retort when called an ignoramus, simply punches you in the face.

But while these threats are nothing new, they are now far more dangerous, as federal immigration officials have shown a willingness to apprehend or kill anyone in their path, regardless of immigration status or actual violations of the law.

Acros Races

It’s no surprise that Rep. Wu would be the target of such vile racism.  As Asian Americans, we are seen as perpetual foreigners who don’t belong here whether we’re first- or fifth-generation Americans. 

But we’re also not the only ones subject to this. 

In 2022 former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, an Indian American, tweeted that Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock should be deported.  It rightfully drew outcry because there is nothing remotely foreign about Warnock.  Unless of course Haley sees African Americans as any less deserving of being in this country than the rest of us.   She might as well have called the Senator “uppity.”

It does reinforce Wu’s point that the “oppressors” he cited were not simply White people.  Such threats by Haley, the daughter of Indian Immigrants, are symptoms of a more broad ideology regarding who belongs in this country and who doesn’t.

Ironically, by exercising his first amendment right’s, Gene Wu is the one who is respecting this nation’s laws rather than calling for them to be broken.

Now that’s a real American.