Rashida Tlaib Responds To Racist ‘Send Her Back’ Chants: ‘I’m Not Going Nowhere’

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Monday gave a fierce response to those who have made racist calls for her and several other congresswomen of color to leave the country: “I’m not going nowhere!”

Tlaib made her declaration as she came on stage to a standing ovation at the NAACP Convention in Detroit. “Not until we impeach this president!” she added, before beginning her speech.

Her remark appeared to be a response to the racist chants of “Send her back!” from the crowd at a re-election rally for President Donald Trump in Greenville, North Carolina, last week. (HuffPost reached out to Tlaib to confirm, but did not immediately receive a response. The chants of “Send her back” were directed primarily at Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who, like Tlaib, is Muslim.)

Tlaib is a member of the self-styled “Squad,” a quartet of progressive Democratic representatives who are all women of color. Last week, Trump sent a number of tweets apparently aimed at the Squad, saying they should “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.” The tweets were widely condemned as one of the most openly bigoted statements from Trump to date, and House lawmakers later voted in favor of a resolution to condemn the president’s words as racist.

Days after sending those tweets, at the Greenville rally, Trump went on a diatribe attacking each member of the Squad ― Reps. Tlaib, Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) ― in turn. He said that “if they don’t like” America, “let them leave.” All four women are U.S. citizens, and only Omar was born outside the U.S.

Of Tlaib specifically, who is one of the nation’s first Muslim congresswomen, Trump said that she “used the F-word to describe the presidency and your president.” “With the big, fat ― vicious the way she said it ― F-word. That’s not somebody who loves our country,” Trump said. (He was apparently referring to Tlaib telling a crowd in January: “We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker.”)

On Monday morning, Trump again attacked the Squad in a tweet, calling them “a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart.”

“I know what’s happening out there… it’s beyond just the four of us,” Tlaib said in her speech at the NAACP Monday. “The Squad is all of you. I can tell you, you are all the Squad, trust me. If you support equity, you support justice, you are one of us.”

Pressley offered a similar message last week after Trump’s tweets attacking the group.

“The ‘Squad’ is big,” Pressley tweeted. “Our squad includes every person fighting for [a] more equitable and just world, and we will not be silenced.”