Illinois NAACP President Asked To Resign After Calling Migrants ‘Savages’ And Accusing Them Of Rape

Haley blamed the circulating clip on deepfake technology.

Illinois NAACP President Teresa Haley is under fire for comments she made made during a meeting in which she likened the city’s migrants to “savages” and accused them of rape. She has been asked to resign, ABC 7 reports.

Constituents claim the disparaging comments were made on a Zoom call with several other NAACP leaders from the state, but Haley denies it.

“But, these immigrants have come over here, they’ve been raping people, they’ve been breaking into homes. They’re like savages as well. They don’t speak the language, and they look at us like we were crazy,” Haley said. According to ABC 7, Haley blamed the circulating clip on deepfake technology saying, “With AI, anything is possible.”

Still, prominent members of the NAACP have called for her resignation and spoken out against her brand of leadership.

“I think she should absolutely resign. I think she’s unfit to be the president, the state president of the NAACP, someone that has that kind of sentiment and that kind of thought against migrant communities,” said Patrick Watson, who was president of the DuPage County branch of the NAACP but resigned following Haley’s comments, feeling that they were the final straw after a long list of alleged misdeeds. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker publicly denounced the NAACP leader’s comments on Dec. 12, saying, “Reprehensible remarks, I would hope that she would apologize for the remarks. I also think that people should recognize that immigrants to this country are all around us.”

Haley did receive support from Watson’s predecessor, Michael Childress, who stressed that the chapter president has done positive work for the NAACP and has the record to prove it.

“These comments are not indicative of what the NAACP stands for. But again, I’m not going to speak on behalf of Teresa Haley and say she should or shouldn’t resign or things like that,” Childress said.

More than 25,000 migrants have been bused to Chicago over the last year from Texas, according to ABC 7. On Monday, Dec. 11, angry residents attended a community meeting in the Little Village neighborhood of the city where a long-abandoned CVS was being fashioned into an emergency shelter for newly arrived migrant families, hoping to make their voices heard amid the growing humanitarian crisis. “Twenty-Sixth Street looks terrible. It’s the new Skid Row,” one resident said.