Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) emerged as the top choice of Hispanic Democrats this week days after she criticized President Barack Obama’s deportation agenda during last week’s presidential debate.
As Breitbart News reported, a Univision poll released on Tuesday found that Harris, who was in sixth place before the debate at 6%, is now in first place among Latino Democrats with 22% support.
Latino activists have long been upset at Obama’s deportation policies. Janet Murguia, the CEO of UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) labelled Obama the “Deporter-in-Chief” while former Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) routinely criticized the Obama administration’s deportation and detention policies.
After telling debate moderator Jose Diaz-Balart last week that she was not in favor of deporting illegal immigrants who have not committed additional crimes in the United States, Harris smoothly pivoted and said: “[T]his was one of the very few issues with which I disagreed with the [Obama] administration, with whom I always had a great relationship and a great deal of respect.”
“But on the secure communities issue, I was attorney general of California. I led the second-largest Department of Justice in the United States, second only to the United States Department of Justice, in a state of 40 million people,” Harris continued. “And on this issue, I disagreed with my president, because the policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE’s own definition were non-criminals. So as attorney general, and the chief law officer of the state of California, I issued a directive to the sheriffs of my state that they did not have to comply with detainers, and instead should make decisions based on the best interests of public safety of their community.”
Harris said the Obama administration was deporting “parents, people who had not committed a crime, even by ICE’s own definition.”
“The problem with this kind of policy — and I know it as a prosecutor. I want a rape victim to be able to run… in the middle of the street and wave down a police officer and report the crime against her,” Harris continued. “I want anybody who has been the victim of any real crime… to be able to do that and not be afraid that if they do that, they will be deported, because the abuser will tell them it is they who is the criminal. It is wrong. It is wrong.”
Erika Andiola, one of the most prominent Dreamer activists who has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration on deportations, last week on MSNBC blamed Obama for creating “a big, strong immigration enforcement machine that was taken by Trump and that was made even bigger.”
Andiola, who is now with RAICES, said amnesty activists are trying to figure out what Democrats would do differently than Trump on immigration because activists do not want more “Obama-type actions” from Democrats.
“Are they going to stop detention of immigrants, are they going to stop the treatment of children in this way at the border, but even deeper, how are we actually going to solve the problem?” she asked while calling on all Democrats running for president to denounce Obama’s deportation policies. “People are fleeing for a reason. What are they doing to solve the problem and not re-creating another you know, like I said, Obama Administration. I keep saying Obama, because he was a Democrat and today we have a Democratic debate.”
Attacking Obama, who is beloved for obvious reasons by the party’s critically important black primary voters, during the primary cycle is a tricky task, even though some on the left blame him for being too centrist. Former Vice President Joe Biden still holds a significant but shrinking lead among black voters, and black voters in South Carolina have told pollsters that they support Biden because he was Obama’s loyal vice president.
Biden, after saying it he found it “immoral” to compare Obama to Trump on immigration, defended the Obama administration’s record on deportations during the debate, saying Obama “did a heck of a job.”
Biden’s answer, though, may not suffice after South Carolina votes. And if Harris is viable after the first-in-the South primary in the Palmetto State, her criticisms of Obama’s deportation policies may give her the upper hand when states like California, Nevada, Texas, and Arizona vote.
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