Although the Dustin Inman Society is small in membership size, it serves as a vehicle for its Atlanta-based founder D.A. King, one of the most prominent anti-immigrant voices based outside of Washington, D.C. today.
About
- D.A. King set up the Dustin Inman Society (DIS) in 2005. DIS is focused on creating statewide legislative change to enact attrition through enforcement policies in an effort to reduce Georgia’s immigrant population. FAIR listed DIS as a state contact group on its website for a number of years. In 2011, NumbersUSA head Roy Beck praised King, stating, “I can’t think of anybody in my 20 years of working on this issue who has been more adroit in working inside the state Legislature to get legislation actually passed. He’s just kind of at the top of the heap nationwide in terms of local activists.” NumbersUSA holds conference calls with King and others on a regular basis, according to The New York Times.
- King has been a regular at anti-immigrant events and protests in the D.C. area dating back to the mid-2000s, including the “DC March for Jobs” in 2013 during the last major push for comprehensive immigration reform. King has attended FAIR’s Hold Their Feet to the Fire event on multiple occasions.
- King is most influential in his home state of Georgia, where he has spent years cultivating relationships with elected officials in the halls of the Capitol in Atlanta. DIS assisted in the passage of the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act of 2006 and Georgia’s Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011, H.B. 87, a bill introduced by King’s ally Rep. Matt Ramsey.
- Among other things, H.B. 87 created the Immigration Enforcement Review Board to examine complaints brought forth by Georgians from around the state. The board lasted until May of 2019 and King was responsible for bringing forward the overwhelming majority of the complaints. In its first six years, King filed 19 of the 20 complaints reviewed by the board. Critics dismissed the Immigration Enforcement Review Board as a major waste of taxpayer funds. As one Atlanta lawyer described it in 2011, “If a complaint is filed against you, even if it has no merit, you still have to waste time and money that a lot of counties don’t have.”
- On the DIS website, King bragged about DIS’s efforts in support of the 287(g) program, allowing state and local law enforcement to act as immigration enforcement officers. King has a very close working relationship with Sheriff Neil Warren of Cobb County, the only Georgia jurisdiction currently participating in the 287(g) program. Warren proudly boasts on his bio page on the Cobb Country Sheriff’s Office website that he is recongnized as “one of America’s toughest sheriffs on illegal immigration.”
Anti-immigrant Views
- King has a long and well-documented history of demonizing immigrants, both on social media and in other outlets. In a speech in 2007 he told a gathering of the Newton County GOP, “[Undocumented immigrants are] not here to mow your lawn – they’re here to blow up your buildings and kill your children, and you, and me.”
- In a 2006 piece for the VDARE website, founded by white nationalist Peter Brimelow, King wrote, “For me, while standing a few feet away from group after group, the impulse to reach out and personally deport these Third World invaders was nearly uncontrollable.” For about three years, King served as a regular contributor to VDARE. In his columns, King has referred to immigrants as “criminal invaders,” among other things.
- Seven years later in an interview with The New York Times, King stated, “I was taught that we have an American culture to which immigrants will assimilate, and I am incredibly resentful that’s not what’s happening anymore.”
- In 2004, King wrote, “Must the United States silently suffer the incursion of one million people a year because they are brown?”
- King announced in 2013 that his supporters could make tax-free donations to DIS through the Michigan-based U.S., Inc. — founded by white nationalist John Tanton. U.S., Inc. has previously donated money to King’s efforts in Georgia.
- King has also spoken on multiple occasions at the annual Writers Workshop event put on by Tanton’s Social Contract Press. The event brings together anti-immigrant activists, white nationalists, and others to speak on different immigration issues. Another speaker along with King at the 2010 Writers Workshop was white nationalist Kevin DeAnna, the founder of the now-defunct far-right student group Youth for Western Civilization. King has also contributed to Tanton’s racist journal, The Social Contract.
- According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in 2005, King organized an anti-immigrant rally featuring Chris Simcox as a featured speaker. Simcox was the co-founder of the Minuteman Project. Simcox is currently serving an almost 20 year sentence after being convicted of child molestation crimes.
- King has regularly pushed the nativist conspiracy theory of the “La Reconquista,” a reconquering of the Southwestern United States by Mexico. The conspiracy theory was popularized by Glenn Spencer, an anti-immigrant activist and founder of the American Border Patrol. King once called an awards show hosted by the advocacy group UnidosUS, “Reconquista TV.”
Anti-immigrant Activity
- On February 8, 2020, Dustin Inman Society hosted an event titled “Honoring Immigrants: An Expert, Pro-Enforcement Conversation on Immigration.” Attendees included CIS director of policy studies, Jessica Vaughan, and former Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan.
- In 2008, King voiced his support for the concept of attrition through enforcement, passing laws/ordinances that make it so difficult for immigrants to go about their daily lives that they “self deport” to another locale, or to their country of origin. King wrote on his blog, “We support the concept of attrition of the illegal population through enforcement of existing laws. The illegal immigration crisis will take years to fix, just as it did to occur. It did not happen overnight and cannot be solved overnight.”
- In a 2008 letter, King voiced his support for the 287(g) program in grotesque terms, writing, “Parasitic ethnic hustlers who encourage and feed on continued illegal immigration will begin to howl that any enforcement of the law that affects the illegals who are their golden goose is ‘profiling’ and, sooner or later, ‘racist.’”
- King often refers to Georgia as “Georgiafornia,” a play on “Mexifornia,” a name given to the state of California by anti-immigrant activists. In a 2006 blog post on VDARE, King lamented, “Proof that Georgia has become a border state is not hard to find. The flag of Mexico is everywhere here and when I call my bank, the cable TV company, my health care provider, and a list of businesses too long to list, English is an optional language on the telephone.”
- In 2019, King penned a piece in favor of Georgia’s E-verify law. King described undocumented workers as, “black market labor.”