On President Trump's Amplification of Post Calling India a 'Hellhole' and Claiming Immigrants Have 'No Loyalty'

From the Karlapalem campaign

MADISON, Alabama - I am a naturalized United States citizen. I have been living in Madison, Alabama for 26 years. UAH graduate, small technology business owner here, Life Member and former Second Vice President of the Limestone County NAACP. I have been married for 31 years. I am now asking the voters of Alabama State House District 4 — Morgan, Limestone, and Madison counties — to send me to Montgomery to fight for them.

That is loyalty. That is what it means to be an American — by birth or by choice.

I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and its laws against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I have not forgotten that oath. I will not. My loyalty is to the Constitution — not to kings, not to special interests, not to any party above the law.

When President Trump amplified a post this week describing India and China as 'hellhole' and claiming that naturalized citizens have 'almost no loyalty to this country,' he was not describing some abstract population. He was describing me. He was describing my neighbors. He was describing the engineers, doctors, teachers, veterans, and small business owners across Alabama who built their lives here, swore an oath to this Constitution, and never looked back.

Let me be direct: this is a lie, and it is a dangerous one.

The same ideology now being broadcast from the White House produced SB21 — the Alabama Republican supermajority's proposal to strip naturalized citizens of the right to hold public office in this state. The line from Montgomery to Washington is straight.

I have been fighting SB21 since the day it was introduced. Over 1,250 Alabamians signed our petition.

We delivered it to Governor Ivey, Secretary of State Allen, Sen. Arthur Orr, and Rep. Parker Moore — who has never responded. The silence was telling then. The silence from North Alabama's Republican officials today will be equally telling.

This is exactly the kind of moment I warned about in December, when I wrote in NRI Pulse newspaper that I never imagined seeing people from my own community — educated, accomplished Indian Americans, especially naturalized citizens who benefited from America's democratic protections — standing next to political leaders openly undermining those same protections. I have seen the photos. I have watched the videos. I have heard the boasts. That warning was not hypothetical. This week, the President of the United States made it undeniable.

History is unambiguous: authoritarian systems always turn on the very people who helped build them.

You cannot buy your safety by making yourself useful to those who have contempt for you.

The Fourteenth Amendment does not distinguish between citizens born on American soil and those who earned their citizenship by oath. If you are born or naturalized in the United States you are a citizen — full, equal, and indivisible. It does not grade your loyalty by your country of origin. It guarantees equal protection and equal rights to all citizens — full stop.

North Alabama's growth — the engineers at Redstone, the technologists in Cummings Research Park, the manufacturers in Decatur, the families building futures in Madison — depends on a community that welcomes people who choose America. Rhetoric that calls their homelands 'hellholes' and questions their loyalty does not make Alabama stronger. It makes us smaller.

I demand every elected official in Alabama — regardless of party — to reject this language of hatred and bigotry and reaffirm that in this district, all citizens stand equal.

I urge every Alabamian to call your state representatives — including Parker Moore — and demand they condemn this language of hatred and bigotry. And reaffirm what this state should stand for: that all citizens are equal, full stop

The Fourteenth Amendment has no asterisk. And neither does this campaign.

Hanu Karlapalem is a Madison, Alabama resident of 26 years, small technology business owner, UAH M.S. graduate, and Life Member and former Second Vice President of the Limestone County NAACP.

He has been on the frontlines fighting against hate and bigotry, for voting rights and freedoms, and to protect our democracy and the Constitution. He has been married for 31 years and has deep roots in the North Alabama community through civic, professional, and community service. He is the Democratic nominee for Alabama State House District 4 in the November 3, 2026, general election.

For more information: https://www.hanu4alabama.com