Protesters Denounce Biden’s Immigration Record at Democratic Debate

Protesters opposing the United States’ immigration policy disrupted the Democratic debate Wednesday night, drowning out former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s closing remarks and momentarily bringing the event in Las Vegas to a halt.

Mr. Biden had just begun to speak when noise erupted from the rear of the Paris Theater, with protesters shouting about deportations under President Barack Obama. “You deported three million people,” one of the protesters yelled.

RAICES Action, an immigrant rights group, said on Twitter that it was responsible for the protest. The demonstrators were immediately escorted out of the debate, and Mr. Biden resumed his closing statement.

The group said in a statement, “We disrupted the Democrat debate tonight because candidates have consistently refused to address the immigration crisis, and it’s simply not good enough.”

The statement added: “We understand not everyone will agree with this form of protest, but we do this as a last resort: Thousands are locked in detention centers, over 60,000 who came here for asylum were sent back to Mexico under MPP, and they’re gutting over refugee programs. This is a humanitarian crisis.”

Several immigrant rights organizations, including RAICES, had earlier in the day released an open letter to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee, arguing that the issue of immigration had been ignored during recent debates.

“We write to raise serious concerns about the lack of debate about immigrant rights during Democratic debates and to request in the strongest possible terms that all candidates detail with far greater emphasis how they will confront and overcome the unrestrained xenophobia and domestic human rights crisis unleashed by Donald Trump,” the letter said.

It was signed by six organizations that have taken the positions that refugees and asylum seekers have been mistreated and that immigrants should have access to health care.

Just before the outburst, an immigration activist associated with one of the groups tweeted: “For this issue they ran out of time? When it comes to immigration they ignored it for 3 debates, leave it last for this one and run out of time?”

There had been discussion about the subject earlier in the two-hour debate, with Senator Amy Klobuchar emphasizing the importance of comprehensive immigration reform.

The groups had said in their letter that the Obama administration had a mixed record on immigration, suggesting that the first question posed at the debate should be: “What lessons have Democrats learned from their failed approach to immigration in the past?”

The six organizations had urged that immigration should be a major topic of the debate in Nevada, which has a large Latino population, also pointing out that the debate was co-sponsored by Noticias Telemundo, the Spanish-language broadcasting network affiliated with the debate’s primary host, NBC.

Protesters had also appeared at several of the eight earlier debates.

In July, a group of protesters interrupted Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, chanting “Fire Pantaleo.” It was a reference to Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City police officer who put a suspect, Eric Garner, in a chokehold before his death in 2014. The protest was apparently aimed at another presidential candidate, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who had refused to fire Mr. Pantaleo. Mr. Pantaleo was fired the next month.

Both Mr. Booker and Mr. de Blasio later withdrew from the presidential race.

An immigrant rights group known as Movimiento Cosecha interrupted Mr. Biden during that same debate, in Detroit.

Immigration was once again the flash point during a debate in September at Texas Southern University in Houston, where protesters were escorted out of the auditorium yelling and wearing shirts arguing for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Those protesters had also targeted Mr. Biden.



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