Testy exchange between VP Kamala Harris and NAU student illustrates administration's distance from young Latinos

About half an hour into Vice President Kamala Harris’ event at Northern Arizona University on Tuesday, a student whom Harris’ staff had chosen to ask a question appeared to go off script.

“I was studying a bit about (your remarks at) a couple of the campuses that you’ve visited, and one thing that stayed consistent was to ‘never silence our voices.' … I want you as well to honor that today,” the student said, eliciting a murmur from the crowd.

What followed was a tense exchange that illustrated the gap between the administration’s policies on immigration and the preferences of young Latino voters, the very voting bloc that Tuesday’s event sought to mobilize.

“This administration has continued to deport children and their families while simultaneously 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 those in Palestine.”

On that last word, the audience broke out into loud cheering.

Responding to the student, Harris said that the Biden administration has proposed legislation creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants. She placed the blame on the other side of the aisle, noting that “Republicans in Congress have purposely not picked it up.”

She gingerly laid out the administration’s stance on Gaza: a policy that seeks to balance steadfast support with Israel, a longtime U.S. 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 rising tumult and scattered jeers from the crowd. “Stop making bombs,” one voice shouted.

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A recent CNN poll suggests that young voters are significantly more likely to say that they have “a lot of sympathy” for the Palestinian people. A YouGov poll this week found that they are less likely to believe that, in this week’s wave of fighting in the region, the Palestinian militant group Hamas is deliberately striking Israeli civilian areas.

Likewise, surveys suggest that most Latino voters oppose building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden resumed building the wall last week, reviving a signature Trump-era policy and breaking a 2020 campaign trail promise not to do so.

On the other hand, with migration levels reaching historic highs this summer, Biden has seen mounting pressure to draw a harder line on the issue. Even some Democratic leadership in cities facing an influx of migrants have joined Republicans in criticizing the administration for failing to control the U.S.’ southern border or provide more resources for migrants.

The vice president's team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Stephen Nuño-Pérez, a NAU professor and political consultant whose firm works on Latino voter outreach for Biden’s re-election campaign, said there is a longer-term gap between some Latinos’ progressive outlook 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 was not being disingenuous about enforcing immigration laws before we could fix our immigration system,” he wrote in a comment to The Arizona Republic. “Latino youth are justified in their frustration.”

Onstage, several minutes after the conversation had cooled down, Harris attempted to diffuse the tension.

“I am not here to tell young voters what they want,” she said to polite applause.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kamala Harris has tense exchange with NAU Latino student on immigration