Matsui Said ‘Hell No’ to ICE Funding. Her Voting Record Says Otherwise.
The California Democrat was born in an internment camp. She’s also voted to fund ICE five times. Now she wants credit for opposing it.
WASHINGTON — Before she was a congresswoman, before she was a Sacramento powerbroker, before she was anyone’s idea of an anti-ICE crusader, Doris Matsui was a baby in the Poston War Relocation Center.
It was 1944. The U.S. government had rounded up more than 110,000 Japanese Americans — citizens and noncitizens alike — and warehoused them in desert camps under the authority of an executive order signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Matsui was born into that detention. She did not choose it. No one did.
It is the kind of origin story that, in a district built on refugee families and immigrant communities, carries enormous moral weight. It is the kind of story a campaign puts front and center. It is also the kind of story that makes what follows very hard to explain.