In a speech on the House floor on Tuesday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) compared undocumented immigrants to bank robbers.

King, notorious for railing against any immigration reform efforts, used the comparison to argue that deporting people is “not a particularly draconian punishment”:

KING: Think of it this way: If someone goes in and robs a bank and step out on the steps of the bank with the sack of the loot and law enforcement appears and says, sorry, you can’t keep the loot and we’re going to put that back in the bank but you can go. That’s equivalent of removal. You don’t get to keep the objective of the crime, we put you back in the condition you were in before you committed the crime. That’s not draconian. That’s the minimum you can do and still have a rule of law apply.

Deportation of undocumented immigrants isn’t like letting a bank robber off easy. It tears apart families, separating citizen children from undocumented parents. Often times, those kids are left to foster care.

Even as the Republican party as a whole has tried to reach out more to Latino voters, King has remained one of the most vocal opponents to immigration reform. Last week, he led his party in a vote to deport more DREAMers. He has also advocated for asking immigrants about their legal status at the hospital, has pushed to prevent more “anchor babies” in the US, and tried to use the Boston Marathon bombing to derail immigration reform.

Despite lobbying by anti-immigration groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, and U.S. Border Control, the number of co-sponsors for the proposed Birthright Citizens Act has dropped significantly over the past several Congresses. The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) would prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from becoming citizens – in direct violation of the 14th Amendment.

When the proposal was first introduced in 2007, then-Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) enlisted 104 co-sponsors — 102 of them Republicans. His 2009 version attracted 95 co-sponsors. After Deal’s election to the Georgia governorship, King took over as chief sponsor in 2011 and got 90 Republican co-sponsors. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a Senate version with four GOP co-sponsors.

But with Republicans pursuing immigration reform in the aftermath of the presidential election, the measure has experienced a significant decline in support. Just two Senators have co-sponsored Vitter’s 2013 Senate bill. And Rep. King’s House version has just 24 co-sponsors to date — all Republicans.

Only a small amount of the drop-off can be attributed to turnover: 16 co-sponsors from the 112th Congress either lost re-election or retired and just one freshman (Michigan’s Kerry Bentivolio) has signed on thus far. And while it is only four months into the 113th Congress, more than two-thirds of the eventual House co-sponsors had already signed on at this point two years ago.

The 51 House incumbents who co-sponsored the bill in the last Congress but have not done so this year include a wide range of Republicans, including Members from swing districts won by President Obama (Reps. Gary Miller of California, Mike Coffman of Colorado, and John Kline of Minnesota) and the nation’s most rock-ribbed Republican districts (Reps. Spencer Bauchus and Robert Aderholt of Alabama and Reps. Ralph Hall and Kevin Brady of Texas). Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) have (so far) dropped from the ranks of the Senate co-sponsors.
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If you’re looking for an example of a politician cloaking his cowardice in principle, look no further than Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

On Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the Boston Marathon bombing that left three dead and more than 150 injured, King gave an interview to National Review Online where he used the attack to justify his opposition to immigration reform.

From the interview:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, a prominent House conservative, says Congress should be cautious about rushing immigration reform, especially after Monday’s bombing in Boston, where three people were killed.

“Some of the speculation that has come out is that yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa,” King says. “If that’s the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture.”

On immigration, King says national security should be the focus now, and any talk about a path to legalization should be put on hold. “We need to be ever vigilant,” he says. “We need to go far deeper into our border crossings. . . .We need to take a look at the visa-waiver program and wonder what we’re doing. If we can’t background check people that are coming from Saudi Arabia, how do we think we are going to background check the 11 to 20 million people that are here from who knows where.”

To be clear, investigators still do not know who perpetrated the attack. The “speculation” King is referring to involves an apparent case of racial profiling, whereby a college student of Saudi nationality was tackled by bystanders because he was fleeing the blast. He “appears to have no connection to the case,” according to the Christian Science Monitor.

The five-term Iowa congressman has a long history of bombastically opposing immigration reform. He has compared immigrants to dogs and proposed an electric border fence to keep them out. He thinks hospitals should ask patients their immigration status before providing care, and even asked a publicly questioned a veteran in a congressional hearing about his immigration status. He’s also promised to sue the Obama administration over its deferred action directive to protect undocumented youth and has said undocumented immigrants will use voter fraud to take over America.