A few weeks ago, I was walking around Washington DC with an undocumented student who was visiting town for some lobby visits. I had passed on his invitation to go to Capitol Hill, but instead invited him to lunch at a small diner downtown, near K Street where most of the large lobby firms are located.

Walking around the streets was the DC life. The suits were there, as were the short heels, some tourists, and the homeless people in Farragut Square. We turned the corner and heard drums. A local labor union was picketing outside one of the fancy buildings. Janitors, security guards, and maintenance guys were chanting in unison, as three men banged of empty plastics paint cans of different sizes, creating a robust 3-piece drumline. There was a lot of rhythm, and you could almost feel their surprise each time someone honked or offered them their thumbs up. They loved it.

Then I saw something peculiar. Marching alongside the building workers was a tall man wearing a Border Patrol t-shirt, and a hat. He was pacing around talking to the workers, taking about two minutes with each one of them. I thought that was fishy. This conspicuous man was the only White person in a protest circle made up entirely of African-American men and women. He also seemed to follow a certain pattern and the only one to break the circular nature of the picket line. He was walking alongside the protestors, but seemed to have a different agenda.

Last week during Netroots Nation, I attended a session where prominent bloggers that cover Capitol Hill shared some of the bizarro experiences their work has left them. I learned that people are paid money to line up over night and occupy the seats during important committee hearings. I heard about the suspicion that many of the townhall hecklers that almost killed health care reform were in fact party operatives of some sort. As we head into the August recess in Congress, we get closer to a repeat of the same offense. This time, the story of the dreamers and their families will be distorted in order to score political points in places like Utah, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Montana where Senators have remained non-commital on their DREAM Act votes.

Last year we had Joe Wilson imitating those townhall people. Just as Obama had abandoned our human right to have access to healthcare, Joe Wilson spoke up – giving a green light to a movement that has become much more secluded and much more ferocious. The solitude of the immigrant rights movement was exposed then. As the president we helped elect took the opportunity to abandon our cause, a foot soldier of the nativist movement opened up a terrifying truth: no amount of enforcement would ever be enough to saciate their commitment to attrition.

The same rightwing movement is getting ready to march in Washington DC on August 28th. Glenn Beck has convened a gathering slated for the same day as when Martin Luther King Jr. came to stand up for Civil Rights for All. He intends the march to be a culmination of a summer-long campaign, which will be fueled by another round of townhall madness.

In the midst of this political climate, Reid says he is “happy to move” the DREAM Act, which means he will do so if everyone else agrees. On this point, there seems to be a possibility for consensus among advocates and legislators. But he provided a strong hint that we may be headed towards a loss, and even went as far as recognizing the potential toll that another DREAM Act loss would have in the minds and hearts of potential beneficiaries.

On the other hand, Reid understands the political lunacy of those who he has been fighting against – or, perhaps , fighting weakly against – in order to accomplish his agenda. As Haiti-hatin’ Mark Krikorian from CIS hinted, the political response to a move to vote on the DREAM Act might already be cooked up:

The only piecemeal thing that might have a chance would be a modified version of the Dream Act that added two important elements: First, to ensure future kids won’t find themselves in such a situation, mandate E-Verify for all new hires; and second, to ensure that no adult responsible for putting these kids in such a predicament could ever benefit, abolish all the family immigration categories except the one for spouses and minor children of citizens. Even I could vote for a bill like that.

Unfortunately, Krikorian’s organization is one of the most influential lobby arms in Capitol Hill. His purpoted support of the DREAM Act with such provisions is, of course, pure lies. But it does highlight the difficulty and discipline of the task of passing the DREAM Act by getting in the faces of those who attempt to use the public sphere as a place to propagate fear of the immigrant.

As we head into townhall season, the Dream movement needs to make sure everyone has to face the sting of at least seeing one cap-and-gowned student before they feel they can speak with liberty about undocumented families. The hecklers will be there, and they might be donning Border Patrol t-shirts. You just have to heckle them back.

Make yourselves known, dreamers.