About half an hour into Vice President Kamala Harris’s event at Northern Arizona University on Tuesday, a student selected by Harris’s staff to ask a question seemed to go off script.
“I’ve been doing a little bit of research on (your remarks at) some of the campuses you’ve visited, and one thing that’s been consistent is ‘never silence our voices’. … I want you to honour that today as well,” the student said, eliciting a murmur from the crowd.
What followed was a tense exchange that illustrated the gap between the administration’s immigration policies and the preferences of young Latino voters, the very voting bloc Tuesday’s event sought to mobilise.
“This administration has continued to deport children and their families while building a wall,” the student said. “Children continue to die at the wall because of this country’s inhumane policies, much like the crimes committed and funded against the people of Palestine.”
At this last word, the audience erupted in loud cheers.
In response to the student, Harris said that the Biden administration had proposed legislation to create a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants. She placed the blame on the other side of the aisle, noting that “Republicans in Congress have deliberately not taken it up”.
She carefully laid out the administration’s stance on Gaza: a policy that seeks to balance unwavering support for Israel, a longtime US ally, with attempts to curb that country’s plans to retaliate against civilians in Gaza, a likely violation of international human rights law.
Harris’s response was met with a growing uproar and scattered jeers from the crowd. “Stop making bombs,” shouted one voice.
Similarly, polls show that most Latino voters oppose building a wall along the US-Mexico border. Biden resumed construction of the wall last week, reviving a signature Trump-era policy and breaking a 2020 campaign promise not to do so.
On the other hand, with immigration levels reaching historic highs this summer, Biden is under increasing pressure to draw a harder line on the issue. Even some Democratic leaders in cities facing an influx of migrants have joined Republicans in criticising the administration for failing to control the US southern border or provide more resources for migrants.
The vice president’s team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Stephen Nuño-Pérez, an NAU professor and political consultant whose firm is working on Latino voter outreach for Biden’s re-election campaign, said there is a longer-term gap between some Latinos’ progressive views on immigration and the Democratic Party’s policy positions on the issue.
“People forget that (former President Barack) Obama deported 3 million people in the false hope that the GOP would not be disingenuous about enforcing immigration laws before we could fix our immigration system,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Arizona Republic. “Latino youth are justified in their frustration.”
On stage, a few minutes after the conversation had cooled, Harris tried to defuse the tension.
“I’m not here to tell young voters what they want,” she said to polite applause.
