Harris hits Trump plan for mass deportations in Spanish-language response

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) on Tuesday blasted President Trump’s plan to deport “millions” of immigrants  without legal status next week, with her campaign releasing a statement in both English and Spanish ripping the move.

“Let’s be clear: President Trump wants to rid our country of ethnic and racial groups he doesn’t like,” Harris’s campaign manager Juan Rodríguez said in the statement, with a Spanish-language version also released in an apparent push for support from Hispanic voters.

“History has shown us what happens when governments begin mass roundups based on ethnic background or national origin,” the statement added.

Mass deportations are cruel and violate our values. As this president rips more families apart, let’s remember that history has already shown us what happens when governments begin rounding people up by ethnic group. This would be a shameful stain on our country. https://t.co/habT23JayV

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 18, 2019

The Trump campaign pushed back on social media, with deputy communications director Matt Wolking blasting Harris’s statement and accusing Democrats of supporting “open borders.”

Let’s be clear: Democrats support open borders and are 100% opposed to enforcing our nation’s immigration laws. They don’t care if unknown individuals live in our country illegally, and they don’t care if this hurts American citizens and legal immigrants. https://t.co/OBrN9dQx0B

— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) June 18, 2019

Trump on Monday tweeted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will begin deporting “millions” of immigrants next week.{mosads}

Hispanics are expected to make up roughly 13 percent of eligible voters in the 2020, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center, making them the largest ethnic or racial minority group in the electorate.

Many GOP strategists had predicted that Trump’s rhetoric about immigration on the campaign trail would especially hurt him among Latino voters in 2016; however, he ended up winning 28 percent of the Hispanic vote that year based on exit polls, which compared favorably to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 27 percent.

–Updated at 2:54 p.m.