Latino Leaders Set Aside Their Rocky Past With Kamala Harris on Immigration
BY JAZMINE ULLOA
NYT NEWS SERVICE/SYNDICATE STORIES UPDATED
JULY 27, 2024 8:33 PM
NIC COURY NYT WASHINGTON -- No issue is likely to be thornier on the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, than immigration. Republicans are falsely painting her as President Joe Biden’s failed “border czar” and running ads tying her to Biden administration policies that they argue have contributed to chaos at the border. But condemnation has also come from liberal and progressive Democrats, who along with immigrant-rights groups have faulted Harris as part of an administration that they say has ceded ground on the issue to former President Donald Trump and his allies.
In one of the most striking moments in Harris’ tenure as vice president, she drew swift criticism from Latino elected officials and immigrant-rights leaders for her admonishment to the growing ranks of migrants in the summer of 2021. “Do not come,” she told them, in a news conference in Guatemala, where she was on a diplomatic tour.
Robert Rivas, a California state lawmaker, helped the Latino Legislative Caucus draft a fierce statement in opposition to those remarks, urging Harris and the administration not to discourage asylum-seekers “from doing what they need to do to survive.”
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