Ella was now in her senior year of high school, which meant that Doug would be spending at least every other week in Los Angeles. This was the hardest part of it all, being away from Ella. Before becoming a senator, I had gone to every one of her swim meets, every one of her basketball games. Kerstin and I usually embarrassed Ella as we sat together and loudly cheered her name. I hated that I would have to miss some of those games now. And I hated that we would have so much less quality time in person, especially because she was about to go off to college, as Cole had done several years earlier. I was committed to flying home as many weekends as I could, which was important to me for so many reasons—to see my constituents, feel the pulse on the ground, and, crucially, cook Sunday family dinner.
The worst was several months later when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go to Ella’s graduation. Fired FBI director James Comey had been invited to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee that same day about the Russia investigation and his firing, and, given the significance to our national security, there was no way I could miss it. When I called to tell her, she was so understanding, but I felt awful about it. I had conversations with some of my female colleagues afterwards. Maggie Hassan bucked me up. “Our kids love us for who we are and the sacrifices we make,” she said. “They get it.” In the case of Ella and Cole, I’m so lucky to know that’s true. When the hearing was over, I dashed to the airport and flew back to California. I missed the graduation ceremony but made it home in time for family dinner that night.
Doug and I rented a temporary apartment not far from the Capitol, along with minimal furniture—a pair of stools, a bed, a foldout couch for when the kids came to visit, and, for Doug, a big-screen TV. With things happening so quickly, there wasn’t much time on the margins for grocery shopping or cooking, though I did make turkey chili one night and froze enough to last us for weeks.
I was sworn in on January 3, 2017, by Vice President Joe Biden during his final month in office, and moved into a basement office alongside other newly elected senators. While not every Senate committee had available seats, I was appointed to four based on my expertise and background: Intelligence, Homeland Security, Budget, and Environment and Public Works.
One week later, the Homeland Security Committee held a confirmation hearing for General John Kelly, who had been nominated for secretary of Homeland Security. I chose to focus my questions to him on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which was created in 2012 by the Obama administration to protect eligible undocumented youth from deportation and allow them to obtain work permits.
“Hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients around the country are afraid right now for what this incoming administration might do to them and also what it might do to their unauthorized family members,” I said.
I went on to explain that in order to qualify for the program, recipients had submitted extensive paperwork to the federal government, including detailed information about themselves and their loved ones. Each person’s case was reviewed and vetted according to specific criteria. The young person must not have been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor, or three or more misdemeanors. They must not have been deemed a threat to public safety or national security. They had to be in school or have already earned a high school diploma or certificate, or been honorably discharged from the armed forces. They had to provide proof of identity, proof of time and admission in the United States, proof of school completion or military status, and biometric information. Only if they cleared this extensive vetting would they get DACA status.
In addition, when they applied, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assured them it would follow its long-standing practice not to use their information for law enforcement purposes except in very limited circumstances. “These young people,” I said to General Kelly, “are now worried that the information they provided in good faith to our government may now be used to track them down and lead to their removal.” Hundreds of thousands of them have relied on our representations.
“Do you agree that we would not use this information against them?” I asked. Kelly wouldn’t directly answer the question. I next read to him from a government document—frequently asked questions about the DACA program. There was a question that asked “If my case is referred to ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] for immigration enforcement purposes or if I receive an NTA [Notice to Appear], will information related to my family members and guardians also be referred to ICE for immigration enforcement purposes?” The answer to the question on the government document was no.
“Are you willing to maintain that policy?” I asked. Again, Kelly deflected. I pressed harder. “Do you intend to use the limited law enforcement resources of DHS to remove [DACA recipients] from the country?” Once again, he refused to answer the question directly.
“Would you agree that state and local law enforcement agencies are uniquely situated to protect the public safety of their own communities?”
“I would agree,” he said.
“Are you aware that state and local law enforcement leaders across the country have publicly stated that they depend on the cooperation of immigrant communities” to prosecute criminal activity and come forward as witnesses to crime?
“I’ve read that.”
“And are you aware that when the government has applied indiscriminate immigration sweeps, many local law enforcement agencies have been concerned and have complained that there has been a decrease in immigrants reporting crimes against themselves and others?”
“I was not aware of that.”
“Will you make it your priority to become aware of the impact on immigrant communities, in terms of their reluctance to report crimes against themselves, their family members, or others, when they are concerned that DHS may direct sweeps against entire immigrant communities?”
“You have my commitment. I’ll get briefed on this. Again I fall back on, really—the law will guide me, if confirmed, in everything that I do.”
That wasn’t enough.
As a former district attorney and attorney general, I had a lot of experience with this issue. I knew that victims of crime—be it rape, be it child sexual assault, be it fraud—simply will not come forward if they believe they are the ones who will be treated as criminals. I also knew that predators use this knowledge to their advantage, exploiting the vulnerability of certain groups who they know will keep quiet. I don’t ever want a victim of a crime to be afraid to wave down a passing patrol car to get help. Such a system serves the predators, not the public. It renders all of us less safe. As attorney general, I had crafted legislation to help ensure that undocumented immigrants who stepped forward to testify about crimes, or to report them, were shielded from deportation for doing so. I knew this would help prosecutors obtain convictions while strengthening the relationship of trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities.
In the end, I voted against John Kelly’s confirmation and pressed my colleagues to do the same. He wasn’t prepared to keep the nation’s promises, and I wasn’t prepared to put him in charge of them.
Whether he ever got briefed on the consequences of indiscriminate immigration enforcement, I will never know. What I do know is that in the first hundred days of the administration, immigration arrests increased by more than 37 percent. The administration chose to make all unauthorized immigrants a priority for deportation, regardless of whether they were otherwise law-abiding members of the community. Arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record nearly doubled.
The policies have had far-reaching consequences for children. As the Center for American Progress documented, ICE officials raided a meatpacking plant in Tennessee where they arrested ninety-seven workers. It was one of the largest workplace raids in ten years. All told, 160 children had a parent arrested in the raid. The next day, 20 percent of the Latinx students in a nearby county were absent fro
m school as parents feared that they—or their children—would be arrested as well. In 2016, a quarter of all kids in the United States under the age of five lived in immigrant families. These children have had to live in the grip of the fear that, at any moment, their parents could be abruptly taken away from them.
Children of immigrants also faced a new kind of torment. Teachers around the country have reported spikes in bullying that echoes the administration’s rhetoric. Kids are being taunted by other kids, told they will be deported, told their parents will be deported, told they should go back where they came from. The words of one prominent, powerful bully have been mimicked and adopted as the rallying cry of bullies everywhere.
Of course, it’s not just the children of immigrants who are affected. According to the Migration Policy Institute, for example, at least 20 percent of early childhood educators are immigrants. Immigrants also represent a large percentage of people working in the early child care industry—and those numbers have tripled over the past two decades. These caregivers—primarily women—nurture millions of children each and every day. The risks to their safety and security in this country due to overbroad immigration enforcement are a risk to us all. This cannot be overlooked.
On January 20, 2017, I attended the presidential inauguration, along with fellow members of the United States Congress. My Senate colleagues and I gathered in the Senate chamber and walked, two by two, through the Capitol Building, exiting the West Front onto the inaugural platform, where risers and chairs were arrayed for the ceremony. As we walked to our seats, we were handed plastic ponchos in case of rain. Doug was sitting with his new pals in the spouses’ section, closer to the stage than I was. He turned around and gave me a wave.
By some twist of fate, the skies opened up just as the transition of power was complete. Some supporters of the president took the rain as a sign of blessing, but for me and so many others, dark clouds were settling in.
Renewal, it turned out, decided to reveal itself the next day. In the runup to Inauguration Day, activists had planned a Women’s March in cities all across the country. But given the organic, decentralized way the march had come together—sparked by a Facebook post from a grandmother in Hawaii the day after the election and organized in a matter of weeks by a diverse group of activists, many of whom had never met before—no one knew exactly how it would unfold.
Reality exceeded all expectations: more than four million people showed up in the streets nationwide, with sister marches in countries around the world.
In Washington, the crowd was so massive that it packed the entire route, end to end—a vibrant sea of pink-hatted people of all ages, races, genders, and orientations. Marchers carried handmade signs that expressed the full range of emotions we all felt, from disbelief to determination, horror, purpose, and hope: IT’S 2017. WTF? . . . STILL I RISE . . . GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS . . . MEN OF QUALITY DON’T FEAR EQUALITY . . . WE THE PEOPLE.
I saw white-haired grandmothers and blue-haired college students; flannel-clad hipsters and down-jacketed soccer moms; toddlers in strollers and teenagers in the trees; men and women in solidarity, side by side. Amazingly, amid the throng, I ran into Aunt Lenore, who engulfed me in a giant bear hug. She told me that her daughter Lilah, who was at the time a leader in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was in the crowd as well. They had come out to march together, carrying forward the banner of social justice that Lenore and my mother had held high as students at Berkeley half a century before.
I had been asked to speak, and as I climbed up to the stage, I was overwhelmed by the size and spirit of the crowd stretching out before me as far as I could see. There were so many people that cellular networks had gone down, yet the energy was electric. No one could move, but everyone seemed to understand that the march was a glimpse of a new kind of coalition whose true strength had yet to be tested. “Even if you’re not sitting in the White House, even if you are not a member of the United States Congress, even if you don’t run a big corporate super PAC, you have the power. And we the people have the power!” I told the marchers. “And there is nothing more powerful than a group of determined sistahs, marching alongside with their partners and their determined sons and brothers and fathers, standing up for what we know is right!”
I talked about women’s issues, at least what I see as women’s issues: the economy, national security, health care, education, criminal justice reform, climate change. I said that if you are a woman who is an immigrant and you don’t want your family torn apart, you know that immigration reform is a women’s issue. I said that if you are a woman who is working off student loans, you know that the crushing burden of student debt is a women’s issue. I said that if you are a black mother trying to raise a son, you know that Black Lives Matter is a women’s issue. “And if you are a woman, period, you know we deserve a country with equal pay and access to health care, including a safe and legal abortion, protected as a fundamental and constitutional right.” I affirmed that together we are powerful, and cannot be written off.
A few days later, Doug and I were in our new apartment in DC, eating dinner on stools at our kitchen counter, when breaking news cut across the television. The president had signed an executive order banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries—Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—for a period of 90 days. He barred refugees from coming to the United States for 120 days and barred refugees from Syria indefinitely.
Travelers started getting detained at airports, unable to speak with lawyers. Families were panicking as their loved ones failed to emerge from airport security. I received calls from activists and lawyers, including Meena, who had rushed to airports to try to help people who were being detained. There was chaos.
So I called John Kelly. By then he had been confirmed as secretary of homeland security, and I needed to find out what was going on and to make sure that anyone being detained would get access to a lawyer. There were a lot of ways Secretary Kelly could have shown his responsiveness, a lot of information he could have provided. Indeed, the American people had a right to this information, and, given my oversight role on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, I intended to get it. Instead, he said gruffly, “Why are you calling me at home with this?” That was his chief concern.
By the time we got off the phone, it was clear that he didn’t understand the depth of what was going on. He said he’d get back to me, but he never did. And by the next day, the nation had erupted in spontaneous protest, knowing full well that the travel ban was really a Muslim ban, and that there were few things more antithetical to our founding ideals. Enshrined in the First Amendment is the notion that not only would America establish no official religion of its own, but the government has no authority to prohibit anyone’s activities based on their religion.
I was new to Washington and still learning how things worked. This episode taught me that calling this secretary of homeland security was a wasted effort. We needed a law. The first bill I introduced in the Senate was the Access to Counsel Act, which prohibits federal officials from denying access to a lawyer for anyone detained trying to reach the United States. But we were in an uphill fight, made harder by the political circumstances of the moment.
Four days after the travel ban was executed, Neil Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court to fill a seat that had been open since Antonin Scalia’s death almost a year earlier. President Obama had nominated a highly respected United States circuit judge, Merrick Garland, to serve. But in an unprecedented show of partisan obstruction, Republicans refused to hold even one hearing on Garland’s nomination. They were rewarded for their recalcitrance. Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate in April 2017, shifting the balance of power on the Court back toward the conservative justices. Fifteen months later, Justice Gorsuch cast the deciding vote in one of the most shameful decision’s in the Court’s recent history: the decision to uphold the pr
esident’s travel ban.
Six
WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS
On February 16, 2017, I gave my maiden speech on the floor of the United States Senate. It was a humbling experience. In recent years, the Senate has been known largely as a body of gridlock and partisanship. Once revered as the country’s most deliberative body, it has often proved to be anything but. And yet as I stood there, it was the giants of the Senate who came to mind, and the extraordinary work that had been done on that very floor. It was here that the New Deal came to life and the economy was saved. It was here that Social Security earned passage and, later, Medicaid and Medicare. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the War on Poverty—all fought for and won right here in this body. At my Senate desk once sat Eugene McCarthy, who sponsored the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended quotas and established rules aimed at reunifying immigrant families.
I opened my speech exactly as those who know me would have expected. “Above all, I rise today with a sense of gratitude for all those upon whose shoulders we stand. For me, it starts with my mother, Shyamala Harris.”
I told her immigration story, the story of her self-determination, the story that made Maya and me, and made us Americans. “And I know she’s looking down on us today. And, knowing my mother, she’s probably saying, ‘Kamala, what on earth is going on down there? We have got to stand up for our values!’”
I didn’t mince words. I talked about the unprecedented series of executive actions taken in the early weeks of the administration, actions that hit our immigrant and religious communities like a cold front, “striking a chilling fear in the hearts of millions of good, hardworking people.”
The Truths We Hold Page 15