Immigration activists crashed a campaign speech by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) Sunday to charge her with not being aggressively pro-amnesty enough. Despite Hagan's attempts to defend her record on immigration, one of the protestors said afterward, "We wanted to make clear she is not our friend."
In the middle of Hagan's speech, immigration activists from North Carolina DREAM Team jumped up on stage with the Democrat Senator and held up protest signs, including one that said "Friends Don't Deport Friends."
Hagan attempted to diffuse the awkward moment by reassuring the protestors that she was "definitely" pro-reform and pointing to her Republican opponent Thom Tillis as the real problem.
“Oh y’all, we definitely support immigration reform,” said Hagan, trying to keep a smile on her face. “But you need to go talk to Thom Tillis... Y’all I supported common sense bipartisan immigration reform.”
But the activists weren’t buying it. Buzzfeed reports:
“We wanted to make clear she is not our friend,” Martinez told BuzzFeed News after the event Sunday. “She has a track record of being anti-immigrant,” she said, pointing to her vote against the DREAM Act and to end the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected undocumented youth from deportation in 2012. […]
Erika Andiola, a DREAMer and national immigration activist who helped coordinate the action with the North Carolina advocates, said that even in a climate where Democrats could lose the Senate to Republicans, Hagan deserves to be protested because she is no better than Tillis on immigration.
“Having her or her opponent in office makes no difference as they are both anti-immigrant,” Andiola told BuzzFeed News. “The North Carolina Dream Team has been working for years to try to get her on our side, and all we have gotten is a no vote on the Dream Act and a vote to repeal DACA.”
The North Carolina DREAM Team recently paid for Spanish-language billboards to call out her betrayal on immigration.
Recent polls show the race between Hagan and Tillis a dead heat, 44/43%.
Video via BuzzFeed.
