More than a dozen activists gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday bearing gifts: cantaloupes — 224 of them.

Volunteers with United Farm Workers, United We Dream and America’s Voice are spending the day delivering these heavy, ovoid fruits to the office of every House member who voted for Rep. Steve King’s amendent to the Homeland Security appropriations bill blocking a White House directive to halt deportation of young undocumented immigrants brought to the country illegally by their parents — the “DREAMers.”

The gag gift is, of course, because of King’s remark that many DREAMers are drug mules with “calves the size of cantaloupes because they’ve been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” The GOP leadership has condemned those remarks, but King is not an easy problem for them to solve.

“Immigrants are actually doing back-breaking work on out nation’s farms to bring cantaloupes and other crops to America’s grocery stores and breakfast tables every day,” the activists’ press release countered.

Each cantaloupe has been afixed with printed notes: “This cantaloupe was picked by immigrants in California” and “you gave Steve King a vote. Give us a vote for citizenship.”

A spokeswoman for the coalition said the cantaloupes were procured from Safeway and other local stores, and that UFW ensured they were, in fact, harvested by immigrants.