Clinton hits Bernie on vote for border ‘vigilantes’

Hillary Clinton deployed a new line of attack against her rival, Bernie Sanders, at Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Miami, attacking him for supporting a 2006 amendment that protected armed volunteers at the United States’ southern border.

“[Sanders] stood with the Minutemen vigilantes in their ridiculous, absurd efforts to, quote, ‘hunt down immigrants,’” Clinton said.

It was the second time the former secretary of state had brought up the vote in the Univision/Washington Post debate at Miami Dade College. The first time, the senator from Vermont dodged the accusation and began talking about his support for immigrant workers. The second time, the moderators picked up on the charge and pressed Sanders. “Did you support the Minutemen?” one asked.

“Of course not!” he said. He accused Clinton of cherry-picking, in criticizing him for his support of one item in a larger bill he voted for. “No, I do not support vigilantes, and that is a horrific statement, an unfair statement to make,” he replied.

But as BuzzFeed reported earlier this year, Sanders voted yes on the amendment itself, which prevented the federal government from providing “a foreign government information relating to the activities of an organized volunteer civilian action group, operating in the state of California, Texas, New Mexico or Arizona.” 

This was meant to protect volunteer, armed, anti-illegal immigration activists from encountering interference from Mexico. The Minutemen movement had largely died out by 2010, but at its height, it attracted thousands of activists, many of them armed, who demonstrated on the border. Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver told Yahoo News after the debate that the amendment was essentially meaningless, which was why Sanders decided he could vote for it. “It was a mischievous Republican bill,” Weaver said.

Clinton and Sanders waged a grueling point-by-point battle over various aspects of immigration on Wednesday night. Sanders swiped Clinton for her past support of President Obama’s deportations, including those of Central American children who arrive at the border alone, and for her early opposition to providing driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. Clinton knocked Sanders for voting against comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 and for the Minutemen vote.

Both candidates vowed that if they were elected president, they would deport only undocumented immigrants who were criminals. Democratic voters in Florida choose between the candidates in a primary Tuesday