By Felicia Persaud
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Feb. 24, 2012: It’s a drama not even a Telemundo soap opera writer could have conceived. And no, it’s no “Harry Met Sally” film. This drama is action packed, rated R and comedic too. It’s all about “Stomp Out The Illegal Aliens” hardliner, closet gay Republican, and Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff, Paul Babeu and his hypocrisy.
It seems while Babeu, Fox News’ man on immigration, was busy bashing President Obama for failing to secure the border and for suing Arizona over state Senate Bill 1070, he was having a hot sexual relationship with 34-year-old Mexican migrant, “Jose,” whom he met while trolling the gay match website, Gay.com.
This was October 2006 when Babeu, a conservative, right wing immigration hardliner who endorses the building of a fence between Mexico and the U.S., apparently extended an invitation for the two to get together. Jose, according to the Phoenix New Times, says that invitation developed into a steamy relationship, complete with sexy texts, naked pictures going across the mobile sphere and of course secret sexual liaisons.
For me the hypocrisy is not whether Badeu was on the down low about his sexuality or not. The stunner was that he was having a relationship with an immigrant whose immigration status is questionable. One could not write a better script and to say it’s ironic and comedic at best is putting it lightly.
Jose claims he’s in the U.S. on a 10 years visa but everyone with any sense of the immigration laws, know there’s no such thing. You can either be on a visitor’s visa for 6 months at a time or you’re on a work visa. This means there’s a strong possibility that the right winged Babeu, who turned up his nose on “illegal aliens” and was ready to chase them all out to the thrill of the right, had a lover who could be categorized as “illegal.” Why else would Babeu and his attorney, Chris DeRose, allegedly threatened the poor man with deportation?
But this drama could get more intense. While the passions between the two have apparently long since cooled, there’s no denying that the heat of the law could be now turned up on Babeu.
Babeu claims that the only truth to Jose’s story is that he is gay and the two were lovers but he never threatened him. Latin group, Respect Respeto, does not believe this, along with the rest of us, and has sent a request to the U.S. Department of Justice for a probe into Babeu “for abuse of power.”
Babeu for his part wants Gila County Sheriff John Armer and County Attorney Daisey Flores to investigate the claims as well as possible crimes committed against him by his ex, whom the Sheriff now accuses of improperly accessing his campaign website and social media accounts.
Whatever the outcome of this issue, there’s no denying the hypocrisy factor that’s at an all time high. It’s a thread that seems to run through the right wingers, who tout themselves as defenders of morality and family values and definitely against illegal immigration, but at the end of the day they are nothing but charlatans. One can’t help but laugh out loud at the twist of events – except it’s not really funny – not for Jose and certainly not for immigrants.
The writer is founder of NewsAmericasNow, CaribPR Wire and Hard Beat Communications.
