Biden already in trouble on immigration

[Cecilia] Muñoz, who once served as the head of former President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, was named by the Biden campaign Friday as part of a group of eight new senior transition advisers.

[...]

Muñoz, a policy expert who cut her teeth at UnidosUS, then known as the National Council of La Raza, before joining the Obama administration, became a lightning rod for criticism of Obama’s immigration policy.

“If Biden wins, no one from the Obama administration should be allowed to touch the immigration policy portfolio,” said Pablo Manríquez, a former Democratic National Committee spokesman who’s been overtly critical of Obama on immigration.

“Cecilia Muñoz is 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,” said Manríquez.

[...]

[Immigration] advocates say she too often defended policies that led to the deportation of more than 2 million people.

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“The whole reason she was in that room was to give a perspective they weren’t hearing, and instead she covered for them,” [said Amy Maldonado, an immigration lawyer whose clients include minors in detention.]

The criticism comes as Biden continues to underperform with Latino voters, a fact that is alarming to many Democrats.

  The Hill

It should be.

Muñoz has both White House experience and immigration expertise, which makes her a natural fit for Biden’s team. In 2000, she won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” for her work on immigration policy.

Brilliant.

Along with Muñoz’s appointment, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) was announced as one of four co-chairs for the transition team, a hierarchical step above Muñoz.

Lujan Grisham led the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in the first two years of the Trump administration and was a vocal defender of immigrant rights and proponent of immigration reform.