Aisha Wahab’s Father Told Supporters to “Call ICE” on Her Opponent. Wahab Still Won’t Say He Was Wrong.
With her father’s own name attached to the comment — and the profile scrubbed the moment press came calling — the state senator has offered two statements and zero condemnations.
WASHINGTON — Her father’s photo is the same one she posted for Father’s Day.
That’s the detail that undoes State Sen. Aisha Wahab’s defense. Not the racist comment itself — “Call ice on the Mexican girl she don’t belong here” — but the picture attached to the account that posted it, a picture that matches the man Wahab called her “toughest critic, but also my biggest cheerleader” in a 2023 tribute on her own campaign page.
Nine days before Californians decide who finishes out former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s term, Wahab, D-Calif., is running from a question that has a one-word answer: yes or no. Was that her father? And if it was, is she willing to say, out loud, that what he wrote was wrong?
She has had two chances to answer. She has answered neither.
What actually happened
On Aug. 3 at 5:48 p.m. PT, Wahab’s own campaign page shared a Mercury News story about her runoff against fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez for the East Bay seat Swalwell vacated in April amid sexual misconduct allegations he denies. The next morning at 9:55 a.m., an account labeled Tawab Wahab left two comments on that post.
The first ran long — Mexicans “should be in jail of ice,” should be sent “back to Mexico,” and the country “belongs to higher people not a fruit, pickers, daughter.” The second was shorter and just as plain: “Call ice on the Mexican girl she don’t belong here.”
Wahab’s campaign deleted both. It did not say why. It did not say who.
Then the press started asking. Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Calif., chair of the CHC BOLD PAC, put the question to Wahab directly in a statement: “Did her father call for Melissa Hernandez’s deportation? And instead of quickly and fiercely condemning the attacks, did her campaign instead delete them, hoping no one would notice?” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and local elected officials piled on.
Around the same time reporters started calling, the Facebook account that posted the comments changed its display name from Tawab Wahab to Tawab Abdul and wiped its profile photo. The profile ID underneath — 100002948386757 — never changed at all.
Two statements, zero names
Wahab’s first response leaned on the passive voice she’s spent a career warning her constituents about in other people’s mouths: “I have been made aware of a racist comment posted on Facebook. I unequivocally condemn it. Racism has no place in our community, our politics, or anywhere else.” She wrote about being “a woman of color who has personally experienced racist and sexist abuse online and in person.” She did not write her father’s name.
Then she cast doubt on the whole thing. “In an era of fake, spoofed, and hacked online accounts, we are not going to speculate beyond facts,” Wahab said — a strange sentence to build a defense around, given that her own campaign had just deleted the comments instead of reporting them, and given that the account changed its name and photo the exact week reporters started asking about it. Real accounts don’t tend to go into hiding.
Her second statement went further, and got more personal — but not more honest. Wahab said her “adoptive father is in his 70s and experiencing declining health,” that his accounts have “previously been compromised,” and that he’d been “targeted by scams directed at seniors.”
She said that when asked about the comment, he was “confused and said he was unaware of it.” She said she didn’t want him “dragged into the middle of a contentious political campaign.” Then she pivoted to her opponent’s donors — AIPAC, “Trump donors” — and her record on abolishing ICE.
What’s missing from both statements is the same thing: a sentence that says her father was wrong. Not racism in the abstract. Not her own experience with bigotry. Her father, by name, telling strangers on the internet to call immigration agents on a Latina candidate because she doesn’t “belong here.”
Why this matters now
Wahab and Hernandez are both Democrats running twice this year for the same seat — once in the Aug. 18 special election to finish Swalwell’s term, and again in the Nov. 3 general for the next full term. Whoever wins the first race gets a head start and a microphone heading into the second. Voters deciding who represents them in the House are being asked, right now, to weigh whether a candidate’s silence about her own father’s words is disqualifying — or just politics as usual.
Wahab had a chance to close this out cleanly: confirm the account, say her father was wrong, move on. She chose ambiguity instead. In an election this close, ambiguity is its own kind of answer.
A candidate’s father told his followers to call ICE on her Latina opponent — and nine days out, she still won’t say he was wrong. This is the kind of accountability reporting that outlets covering this race from a distance will miss entirely. Send this to one person deciding how to vote in CA-14.
Time to ice ICE! It’s so unconstitutional that I don’t even know where to start.
Pablo your granular tenacity (the account name changed but the number did not, cannot) is excellent. Thx for standing and delivering