Whoops! Arizona Republican Mistakes YMCA Campers For Terrified Migrant Children

Arizona Republican Adam Kwasman is very concerned about the terrified migrant children currently caught up in a larger immigration kerfuffle at the border — so much so that he was unable to discern the difference between YMCA camp kids and unaccompanied migrant kids.

In a tweet now deleted, but preserved by Politwoops, Kwasman gnashed his teeth over the fear in the eyes of what he believed was a bus of kids being brought across the border to a strange land.

In essence, they were actually kids going to camp, but he was really seriously sincere about the welfare of imaginary children in this made up scenario.

Politwoops describes itself thusly:

“An archive of the public statements deleted by U.S. politicians. Explore the tweets they would prefer you couldn’t see.”

In this case, it appears the Arizona Republican didn’t recognize his misassumption — and a AZCentral’s Brahm Resnick spotted the error:

“But there was a problem with Kwasman’s story: There was no fear on their faces. Those weren’t the migrant children in the school bus. Those were children from the Marana school district. They were heading to the YMCA’s Triangle Y Camp, not far from the Rite of Passage shelter for the migrants, at the base of Mt. Lemmon.”

Whoops! Gawker has the exchange between Kwasman and Resnick, in which the former explained his concern, unaware it was misplaced, and was corrected.

Bless his heart though, he really tried to pull out his point regardless of the error:

Resnick: “Which children on the buses were those?”

Kwasman: “I saw a school bus with plenty of children on it. So, so, I’m assuming that was the bus that was moving through.”

Resnick: “You know, that was a bus with YMCA kids.”

Kwasman: “They were sad, too… Okay, I apologize. I was, I was leaving as I saw them…”

Initially, Kwasman had said:

“Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law. #AZ01 ”

What’s striking about the mistake is how easily a garden variety of kids going to summer camp in the mind of one political opponent appeared to be such a definitively sad sight — with a simple (if wrong) belief that these kids were distraught migrants, that’s what appeared in front of the Republican politician’s eyes, as if by magic or confirmation bias.

Last tweet not the bus of illegal immigrant children. Thank God.

— Adam Kwasman (@AdamKwasman) July 15, 2014

Kwasman continues to tweet about the issue, but in the above tweet, he admitted his error.