La Raza's Reach Into the White House

After the Obama immigration actions, I looked at the National Council of La Raza's extensive reach inside the White House, as I point out in my feature on the organization in Organizations Trends.

Cecilia Muñoz (WhiteHouse.gov)

No matter who the next president is, it’s unlikely the organization will enjoy the same clout with the White House as it has under the Obama administration. The reason is what the government watchdog group Judicial Watch calls the “Muñoz factor.”

Muñoz refers to Cecilia Muñoz, a former vice president of La Raza who is now Obama’s White House domestic policy director. (Her official title is “Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.”) The New York Times referred to her as a “fiery immigration rights lobbyist” who in 1997 was furious when Clinton White House staff twice asked her if she was an American citizen. ...

As an activist, she said there should be another amnesty just four years after the 1987 amnesty in a report she wrote for La Raza. Her report also called for ending all workplace enforcement aimed at illegal immigrants.
While serving in the Obama White House, she minimized the seriousness of illegal immigration. “If you were running the police department of any urban area in this country, you would spend more resources going after serious criminals than after jaywalkers. DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) is doing the immigration equivalent of the same thing,” Muñoz told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute conference in September 2011.

When the Obama White House asked her to come on board, she turned them down, feeling she was an activist not a policymaker. But then Obama made a personal call.
“He said that he wasn’t taking no for an answer, that he intended to make this as family-friendly a place as it could be, and that he wanted me to help change the country,” Muñoz said. After the 2012 election, Muñoz said she is glad she joined the White House staff because “the Latino community has gone from being invisible in this town to being not only visible but clear agents of change driving the country forward.” Muñoz added, “People feel empowered”.

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