Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders engaged in heated exchanges over immigration policy during Thursday night's debate on PBS. At one point, Clinton contradictorily insisted that "we should be deporting criminals, not hard-working [illegal] immigrant families." The problem is that, by definition, those families are criminals, because they broke the law and entered into the U.S. without proper paperwork, reports The Daily Caller.
The comments came as Clinton and Sanders argued over how effective the Obama administration's immigration reform efforts have been.
Clinton said that she supports Obama's executive action to provide amnesty to millions of immigrants in the country illegally but is against the deportation raids that target families who have already been ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge.
"I am against the raids," Clinton said during the debate in Wisconsin. "I'm against the kind of inhumane treatment that is now being visited upon families, waking them up in the middle of the night, rounding them up."
She explained: "We should be deporting criminals, not hard-working immigrant families who do the best they can and often are keeping economies going in many places in our country."
Sanders used it as an opportunity to highlight how in 2014, Clinton supported deporting unaccompanied Central American minors who came to the U.S. to flee violence in their home countries.
"If my memory is correct, when we saw children coming from these horrendous areas of Honduras and neighboring countries, people who are fleeing drug violence and cartel violence. ... I thought it was a good idea to allow these children to stay in this country. That was not as I understand, the secretary's position," the independent senator from Vermont said, reported The Hill.
Critics also note that back in 2003, Clinton said on the "John Gambling Radio Show" that she is "adamantly against illegal immigrants."
