A senior Latina adviser has left former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, according to a report on Monday.
“The campaign is just hyper-focused on whites in Iowa and African-Americans and it placed less value on Latino outreach,” one person, described as an immigration activist, told Politico.
“Vanessa kept banging her head against the wall trying to get them to take the community more seriously,” another said. “And Biden just really won’t change when it comes to the way he talks about immigration. It became too much.”
Cardenas, according to the news outlet, had no experience in working on a political campaign before Biden. Cristobal Alex, who is the former president of the influential Latino Victory Fund, is Biden’s most senior adviser to the former vice president.
The move comes after Biden told a protester in South Carolina that he won’t stop all deportations if he is elected president.
The protester was reportedly part of the far-left immigration group Movimiento Cosecha.
The United States under the Obama administration deported between 315,000 and 409,000 people each year from 2008 to 2014, reported the Washington Examiner, which noted that those numbers are higher than the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Biden secured an early victory after he was endorsed by Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), who is considered among the most popular and powerful politicians in the state. Nevada is one of the Democratic primary states.