Cecilia Muñoz once wrote that “outrage” as an immigration activist got her jobs in Washington, but it was a willingness to self-censor that got earned her current job in the White House. On Thursday, Ms. Muñoz became the target of the activist anger that she used to dish out, as she delivered a speech defending President Barack Obama’s immigration policies to members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). A former immigration lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza, she’s seen as the face of Obama’s immigration policy as Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
“You’re job is to hold our feet to the fire when we get it wrong. I know that job, I did it for 25 years. Keep doing it, it’s important,” Muñoz told the immigration lawyers.
On Thursday, that face turned into a punching bag. Despite a chummy introduction where she underscored her closeness with AILA leaders, the substance and context in the room made her a target of rage. Many of the attorneys attending the event represent the victims of alleged human rights abuses committed by the Obama administration. Seventeen lawyers had petitioned for AILA to disinvite Muñoz over the administration's support for family detention, whereby immigrants are imprisoned with their families. They say that the children receive substandard medical care and educational retardation. Many of the detainees in those jails are applying for asylum, arguing that they can’t return to their home countries for fear of persecution.
Muñoz took the stage at AILA with a hug from the event’s organizer and awkward silence from her audience.
“I recognize that I’m asking a hard thing,” Muñoz told the crowd at AILA. “Nobody on the pro-immigrant side of the debate wants to be the one to say, here’s who you should remove from the country, and here’s how you should do it, or here’s who you should detain — here’s what a vigorous enforcement strategy that’s also humane should look like.”
By the end of her speech, attendants stood at the foot of her podium hold signs with the word SHAME, including images of children in detention, according to Law360’s Alissa Wickham, who was at the speech. Near the end at least one detractor yelled at her, screaming (to match the volume of her microphone) “not children.” While the AILA director would later call the shouting “unprofessional,” it almost seemed as if Muñoz had been brought specifically to bare the brunt of the lawyers’ ire. Here is an excerpt of AILA’s response rejecting to the petition on to have Muñoz uninvited to the conference.
“She holds senior office in the White House, and thus can stand in front of a room of immigration lawyers and speak for the White House. And the White House must be held accountable for what it has done,” the AILA official wrote. “The best way to do that is to put a White House official in front of a couple thousand immigration lawyers and talk about what the Administration has done [...] So, no, we will not be disinviting Ms. Munoz [sic]. We will have her come and speak to our conference. We will behave professionally, but we will also challenge her to account for the Administration’s actions.”
The lawyers might not have behaved as “professionally” at the talk as the AILA top brass had hoped. In the end, Muñoz was challenged with a kind of outrage that a younger version of herself might have been proud of.
Ms. Muñoz did not respond to the Latin Times' request for comment. You can see her entire speech below (protesters are at the left of the stage).
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