D.A. King, a confrontational activist in Georgia’s decades-long battle over immigration policies, was both loved and loathed.
He was revered by politically conservative allies for advocating for stricter enforcement of immigration laws, and he was criticized by opponents for his harsh rhetoric aimed at immigrants.
King, a former insurance agent, emerged in the immigration debate in the early 2000s and built a reputation by showing up and lobbying at county and state government meetings, public immigration events and by talking to reporters.
“D.A. King was a man ahead of his time,” said Marci McCarthy, chairperson of the DeKalb County Republican Party. “He really dedicated his life to stressing immigration policy, ensuring enforcement of existing laws and just overall protecting our communities.”
King died March 5 from cancer, said his wife of 42 years, Sue Lanier King. He was 72.
“He was all about securing borders and enforcing laws, and he was not going to quit,” she said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center classified the Dustin Inman Society, which King founded in 2003, as an anti-immigration hate group, alleging it “poses as an organization concerned about immigration issues, yet focuses on vilifying all immigrants.” The group has sued the SPLC, claiming the description is false and defamatory because the group only opposes unlawful immigration. A trial is scheduled for October, according to an online docket of federal cases.
King often told a story that he helped Latino neighbors move into a home near him, then was infuriated as they packed cars onto the lawn and people into the house. He said they told him, “Your laws don’t apply to us, and it is our culture to park six cars on the unmowed lawn.”
He was a fixture at the state Capitol, lobbying for legislation he said would protect American jobs and values and protect Americans from crimes committed by immigrants.
King saw years of work come to fruition last year when the Georgia General Assembly passed House Bill 1105, the Georgia Criminal Alien Tracking and Reporting Act. The law requires local law enforcement to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an officer arrests an immigrant without legal permission to be in the U.S. It also says prisons and jails that fail to turn in quarterly reports on detainees without legal permission to be in the U.S. risk losing federal aid.
“It was long overdue, but it was done through the efforts of D.A.,” said Mary Grabar, a member of the advisory board of the Dustin Inman Society.
King initially called his organization the American Resistance Foundation but changed its name to recall a Georgia teenage driver killed in a wreck caused by an immigrant here without legal permission.
King was unafraid of controversy or to mix it up with anyone.
He called the former state Immigration Enforcement Review Board “a parody of a kangaroo court that had corrupt leadership.”
In a 2013 Cobb County Board of Commissioners meeting, King pulled out a fake rattlesnake and said, “People who have no respect for immigration laws and come into our country and lower the wages and take the jobs of our poorest … could easily qualify as a rattlesnake.” He then used his blog to publicly insult commissioners who did not agree with him.
King had attracted enough attention by that time that The New York Times wrote a short profile of him. Afterward, Bill Nigut, who was then head of the Southeast office of the Anti-Defamation League, criticized the profile for omitting King’s “long history of using coded language and hate speech against immigrants.”
King has “asserted that the United States is ‘being invaded and colonized’ by a ‘Mexican mob that brings with it a culture of lawlessness and chaos.’ He has described Hispanic immigration in Georgia as the ‘Hispandering’ of Georgia, which he calls Georgiafornia,’” Nigut wrote in 2013 while with the ADL. Nigut is also a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution employee.
Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials at the time, called King’s stances an “extremist xenophobic narrative.”
King’s supporters maintain a different view.
Judy Craft, of Cumming, said King was “a tremendous influence in Georgia to make Georgia a safer place and to try to protect jobs from being taken from Americans by people who would work for less.”
Josh McKoon, a former state senator and chair of the Georgia Republican Party, said the Southern Poverty Law Center and others spread “dangerous rhetoric” about King. He first met King in 2011 while working to pass HB 87, an immigration enforcement law. Over the next seven years, they collaborated on multiple measures with varying degrees of success, McKoon said.
“What D.A. saw with a clarity and passion that few possess was the clear and present danger lax immigration enforcement created for the United States of America,” he said.
“You could not have a more faithful friend or zealous advocate than D.A. King,” McKoon said. “In many ways, he was a prophet, identifying the issue of immigration enforcement years before President Trump made it the cause of American conservatives and never yielding even under extraordinary pressure.”
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