Joe Biden's Latina Assistant Resigns Due To Frustration

Working for someone who constantly invalidates your purpose for being hired in the first place, whether intended or not, is indeed frustrating.

This same frustration has driven Vanessa Cárdenas, Joe Biden's Latina assistant who was in charge of outreach to Latino, African-American and women's groups, to resign last week, changing her Twitter bio to "formerly with @joebiden." Since April 25 this year, Cárdenas, an activist who has never worked on a political campaign before, served as the campaign's national coalitions director.

According to her two allies, Cárdenas was frustrated over the presidential candidate's immigration rhetoric. They added, Cárdenas felt the presidential candidate was not considering her advice on immigration as she tried to address concerns that have been raised by Latino groups with the former vice president that can be traced back from the Obama administration.

One of Cárdenas' friends who is also an immigration activist said the campaign is "hyper-focused" on white race in Iowa and African-Americans but placed less value on the Latino community.

The immigration activist also disclosed that Cárdenas kept banging her head against the wall in her frustration since the team does not take the community more seriously.

Despite Cárdenas' resignation, Biden's Latino outreach team remains intact which includes former president of the influential Latino Victory Fund Cristóbal Alex who remains Biden's most senior adviser for issues involving Hispanic voters, and Laura Jiménez, Biden's Latinx outreach director.

Cárdenas' departure is only one of the Latino-related disputes confronting Biden. Thursday last week, an event in South Carolina heated up as Bided clashed with Carlos Rojas, a member of immigration activist group Movimiento Cosecha, who wanted Biden to pledge the cessation of deportations.

However, Biden said he will not stop all deportations, rather prioritize deportations of those who have committed felony or serious crimes.

The activist then told Biden that he was a volunteer during for the Obama-Biden campaign in 2008, but has halted his support along the way because in eight years of his administration, three million people were deported and separated from their families.

Rojas' statement was responded by Biden saying he should vote for Trump.

Cárdenas' immigrant friend further said that the heated exchange, which occurred after resignation, was a perfect example of what Joe Biden's assistant was dealing with and only confirms her concerns regarding the campaign as Biden refuses to address the issue in a compassionate way.

Despite all the criticism, Biden continues to score first among Latino voters in many national polls and surveys of states where Hispanic communities are prominent. Meanwhile, the result of other polls among Latinos show that Biden is tied with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

It can be recalled that in June, Biden skipped a Latino elected officials forum and was criticized for it- at the time, a campaign surrogate stood as a senior campaign staffer in Cárdenas' absence during the campaign as proof of presidential candidate's commitment to Latino voters. In August, his campaign went into damage control after the uproar of immigration activists over his rhetoric on the issue at a debate. Biden also ditched a California Democratic event where he was aware the immigration issue would be raised.