Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is arguably the greatest weapon in the Bernie Sanders campaign arsenal, according to a report in Vanity Fair. So, while Senator Sanders was stuck in D.C. for the impeachment trial, AOC hit the campaign trail in Iowa on behalf of the senator. After a three-day stint stumping for Bernie, Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign manager, reportedly sent a text to AOC's campaign manager to express his unhappiness with some of the congresswoman's remarks.
(Via Vanity Fair)
Specifically, the Sanders campaign was miffed that Ocasio-Cortez didn’t mention Sanders by name when she closed out a campaign event at the University of Iowa on a Friday night at the end of last month—a fact that Fox News picked up on. ...
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments about the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol were also seen by some within the Sanders campaign as going too far, straying from Sanders’s stance on the issues in encouraging people not to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, according to this source. During an event in Ames, Iowa, Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd, “Organizing is about tipping people off if you start to see that ICE and CBP are in communities to try and keep people safe.” She continued, “I’m not here to reform some of these systems when we talk about immigration. I’m here because Senator Sanders has actually committed to breaking up ICE and CBP. That’s why I’m here.” (Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign declined to comment.)
Abolishing ICE is a major platform plank for AOC and a number of other progressive figures—including Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who have also endorsed Sanders. In the past, Sanders has been for stricter immigration laws than those supported by some of his progressive colleagues, though he’s tacked left more recently.
In January, it was reported that the Sanders campaign was mulling a list of possible executive actions, including a dozen or so orders that would reverse the Trump administration's immigration agenda. Such actions include lifting the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United Sates and halting any construction of the proposed border wall.
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But even as late as 2015, Sen. Sanders opposed the idea of open-borders, calling it a "Koch brothers' proposal" that hurts poor people living in the United States. His comments were made during an interview with liberal-leaning Vox Media.
"Open borders?" Sanders began, "Now that's a Koch brothers' proposal." Sanders went to say that he views his first obligation as being to the Americans already living in the United States and not the billions living all over the world.
But now that Sanders is running in the Democratic primary, he's forced to adopt the crazy immigration policies, supported by people like AOC and the squad, that would harm American citizens and American workers. Sanders is also forced to roll the dice by handing a microphone over to someone like AOC to speak on his behalf.
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