If elected president, Harris will join a long line of Democrats all too willing to irreparably harm immigrant communities for political gain.
By Tina Vásquez, Prism
As we approach the presidential election, there has been a flurry of headlines feigning objectivity through euphemistic niceties. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris “talks tough on border.” Harris and Democrats “walk a delicate—and harder—line” on immigration, which, if you didn’t know, is the party’s “biggest weakness” that they are trying to “turn the tables on.”
What do these headlines really convey? The easy answer is Democrats’ “hard-right turn” on immigration. But as a longtime immigration reporter, I know there’s also a more difficult answer: a mainstream media ecosystem that has never had the range, the nuance, or the know-how to report on immigration accurately.

The deeply partisan divide on immigration—one that frames Democrats as the party of open borders and Republicans as the nation’s hard line of defense against the invasion, swarm, influx, [insert your preferred racist language here] of migrants at the border—isn’t merely the creation of pundits and politicos. This rhetoric is also a media fabrication, solidified over decades of irresponsible coverage.
Much like borders everywhere, the cataclysmic conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border are man-made—and if Harris has her druthers, soon they may also be woman-made. If elected president, Harris will join a long line of Democrats all too willing to harm immigrant communities irreparably for political gain.
Because you see, it’s mostly a mythology that Democrats alone usher in more humane immigration policies. I came to more fully understand this when I first reported on immigration full time under President Barack Obama. I covered the administration’s full-fledged assault on Central American asylum-seekers in the form of fast-track mass deportations, the return—and expansion—of family detention, and enforcement operations targeting young people on their way to school. This was deeply unpopular work at the time, and readers often pushed back on the reporting. After all, how could a president who represented progress and adopted the English equivalent of “sí se puede”—a term “rooted in the struggle of working-class Latinos”—so seamlessly become the deporter-in-chief who brought back “baby jails”? To better understand Obama’s trajectory and the frightening machinery he wielded over immigrant communities, you have to revisit former President Bill Clinton’s 1996 laws.
Recent Posts
Watch This New Hollywood Movie About Gaza
May 30, 2025
Take Action Now At 178 at the time of publication — and now higher — the count of journalists and media workers killed by the Israeli…
Israel Is Losing Americans’ Support. Will Democrats Take Notice?
May 29, 2025
Take Action Now New polls show broad opposition to Israel’s genocide — and that Democrats’ intransigence on Gaza greatly reduced turnout…
Ukrainians Need (And Want) An End To War
May 28, 2025
Take Action Now It would be tragic to give up on negotiations now.By RJ Eskow, The Zero Hour Report Donald Trump’s expressed exasperation over…
Cuomo Hopes Phony Antisemitism Charges Can Beat Zohran Mamdani
May 28, 2025
Take Action Now Zohran Mamdani is closing the gap with Andrew Cuomo.By Theodore Hamm, Drop Site In the summer of 2024, Andrew Cuomo announced the…