On Friday, Joe Biden's campaign announced that Cecilia Muñoz, a former White House Domestic Policy Council director under President Obama, would join the Democratic presidential nominee's transition team as a senior advisor. Immigration advocates were quick to denounce the pick, with former Democratic National Committee spokesman Pablo Manríquez, a frequent critic of Obama's immigration record during his presidency, calling Muñoz "the one person besides [Trump White House aide] Steven Miller who has spent years of her public service dedicated to the smooth execution of mass deportation policy at the West Wing level." As Rafael Bernal of The Hill reports:
"The criticism reflects in part the view that Muñoz did not advocate enough for immigration rights during internal discussions in the Obama White House. Instead, advocates say she too often defended policies that led to the deportation of more than 2 million people.
"'She was the person in the White House who shielded Obama from all the flak,' said Amy Maldonado, an immigration lawyer whose clients include minors in detention.
"'The whole reason she was in that room was to give a perspective they weren’t hearing, and instead she covered for them,' added Maldonado.
"The criticism comes as Biden continues to underperform with Latino voters, a fact that is alarming to many Democrats."
In addition to the aforementioned deportation of over 2 million undocumented immigrants, the Obama administration was also responsible for building cages that hold immigrant children imprisoned by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Biden campaign's selection of Muñoz as a senior transition advisor, in spite of the fact that the former vice president, in the words of Bernal, "has slowly but surely distanced himself from Obama’s more aggressive immigration policies," could be explained by campaign contributions that he has taken from organizations that have contracts with ICE.
Among the organizations that, as of June 2018, are doing business with ICE, high-ranking members of several of them have given big to Biden. His top donor among these members is Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky, who has not only contributed $5,600 to the Democratic nominee's campaign, but also $250,000 to the Biden Victory Fund. The fund has also received $213,000 from LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue, as well as $50,000 from David L. Cohen (from whom the Biden campaign has taken $5,600), Comcast's senior executive vice president and chief lobbyist. Returning to Amazon, vice president Babak Parviz has additionally contributed $2,800 to Biden's campaign, and $50,000 to the Biden Victory Fund.
Bernal also states that, while having Kamala Harris, one of the most liberal senators on immigration, as his running mate helps Biden to make the case that he is not as aggressive on the issue as his former boss, "immigration activists are on the lookout for signs that Obama-era policies could make a comeback."
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