So here’s a piece I recently wrote questioning the Obama campaign’s use of George Lopez in their Latinos for Obama outreach efforts. This is a guy who is known for saying, “F&#@ that puto!” Is this the kind of celeb the Latinos for Obama outreach arm wants to promote? And do other Latinos identify with his humor?

My initial reaction to the piece was that there was a lack of analysis of what Muñoz has been saying. More specifically, Ms. Muñoz has been telling us that more than half of the people who have been removed are serious criminals when other data suggests that they aren’t. And then there’s the issue of Muñoz addressing DHS’s prioritization of removals when new evidence suggests that the application of deportation prioritization are inconsistently applied. So there’s a disconnect in the policy implementation where the folks on the ground are pursuing a different course of action from what the leadership (people like Muñoz) are publicly saying.

In the eyes of many immigration policy observers, the administration and Cecilia Muñoz, since she’s part of it, continue to have a credibility problem. As more people shed light on this issue of who is being deported and for what, look for more people to publicly question what has been going on with the Secure Communities program and deportations given the goals of DHS. The scrutiny may even ramp up if more US citizens are caught in the deportation dragnet.

Word is that the White House is considering Cecilia Muñoz to replace Melody Barnes as President Obama’s domestic policy chief. So ultimately, Muñoz will have to decide whether she wants to continue to be part of an administration that some feel is “worse than Bush” on immigration. Because of her previous advocacy in immigration, people will continue to focus on what she says when she’s tasked with discussing immigration on behalf of the President.

There are some, who want Ms. Muñoz to set the record straight about the statistics she has been citing about the people who have been deported, and there are some folks in the community who feel that calls on Muñoz to clarify those remarks are unjust. Last night apparently, famed labor activist Dolores Huerta weighed in on this at the LATISM conference saying that the attacks on Muñoz are unjust.

How do you solve a problem like Cecilia?

Activists say Obama aide Cecilia Munoz has ‘turned her back’ on fellow Hispanics

Calling the Question: Why Cecilia Muñoz is not the issue (An interesting rebuttal to the first piece listed “How do you solve…” attacking a writer for being critical of Muñoz.)

Plainly, there is a credibility problem with the immigration issue in the administration.

What are your thoughts? Are the criticisms of Cecilia Muñoz and the administration valid, or should people ignore the messenger and just focus on the bigger picture and problems with the current immigration situation? Does Dolores Huerta’s message to “defend Cecilia Muñoz” resonate with you? Do you think Huerta would be asking people to defend the messenger of the administration’s policies if that person was not Latina or did not have a background in immigration advocacy?

“Obama later visited the Spanish-style mansion of Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith for what promoters billed as “the first ever Latino fundraiser” for the president.

Actress Eva Longoria, one of the stars of television’s Desperate Housewives, introduced Obama by saying he “speaks to the Latino community because he knows he’s the president of all Americans.”

“And we applaud you from our community,” Longoria told Obama. “We thank you for everything you’re doing.””

Meanwhile on the immigration front, which is a key issue that Candidate Obama touted on the campaign trail in 2008 when he was in front of Latino audiences, we have continued to see record breaking deportations and even suggestions that those same tough enforcement policies will continue. Last week an important documentary aired on PBS’s Frontline, Lost in Detention, in which an Obama official, Cecilia Muñoz said, ““As long as Congress gives us the money to deport 400,000 people a year, that’s what the administration is going to do.”

Watch Lost in Detention on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Understandably, immigration rights advocates are upset, and some people feel a disconnect between the administration’s courting of the celebrity wing of the Latino community versus the needs and desires of the grassroots. Presente.org even has a petition for Cecelia Muñoz to “set the record straight.”

Going into the 2012 election cycle, which message do you think will resonate with Latino voters? Will people support the President because some of our high profile celebrities are lining up behind Team Obama or will the Latino community simply not vote for a candidate for President as Professor Gary Segura of Stanford implies in the documentary?

And this week in Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire DREAM Teams demanded an end to the Secure Communities Program at the Roybal Federal building. Some activists were arrested.

As election season heats up, there will be more protest opportunities, especially as the President starts to publicly campaign. I suspect that if the implementation of Secure Communities continues as it has in the past that there will be even more actions. Undocumented activists are taking more public steps to speak out, which brings me to the following blog piece by Thay Alaffita:

Coming Out of the Shadows

Also, today an informal e-mail poll has been circulating sent out by the Latino Voter’s League asking people whether they think Cecilia Muñoz should resign. I suspect that that the community is going to continue to try to hold her accountable for her remarks defending the Secure Communities program. What are your thoughts? Should energies be expended in trying to get Muñoz to resign over the President’s record on deportations and her defense of Secure Communities or should advocates look at other strategies to bring about change in immigration policies?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

“Civil and immigrant rights activists demonstrated Tuesday outside the state Democratic Party’s headquarters in Atlanta, calling on the Obama administration to scrap a federal fingerprint-sharing program aimed at deporting illegal immigrants.

The demonstrators complained the “Secure Communities” program is tearing families apart and distracting local police from other crime-fighting priorities. They timed their demonstration to coincide with protests in Chicago and other cities across the nation.

Also Tuesday, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and other groups released a lengthy report condemning the program. Among other things, the report says Secure Communities makes immigrants fearful of reporting crimes to police and results in the deportations of many people who have committed no crimes other than being in the country illegally.”

These actions are in response to the over 1,000,000 immigrants being deported since President Obama took office. With the upcoming Presidential election and the increasingly heated rhetoric coming from the GOP contenders on immigration (see Rick Perry’s drone statement), activists are taking the opportunity to really push the President to use some of the tools he already has to ease the deportation situation.

Already the White House is responding to these actions with Cecilia Muñoz, the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, writing this blog defending the Secure Communities program. And predictably, some in the community are calling for Muñoz to resign her position. That Muñoz is being dispatched to respond this week about Secure Communities shows that the White House is paying close attention.

Unless some changes are made, the calls for resignations, petition signing, and protests will continue. What are your thoughts? Should Latinos working in the White House resign over this issue or should they continue to defend the administration’s position?

How would you rate the President, and do you think the Latino organizations are representative of the community in issuing this grade?

Today Rep. Grijalva put out the following statement about the current pending deal:

“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” the statement read. “Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.”

If things aren’t resolved within the deadline, I think President Obama should exercise the leadership that many are looking for and invoke the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling although this would provoke a legal showdown since the “law is murky”.

By Seneca

Frankly, President Obama does not seem like he was fully prepared to be President. His hubris may have gotten the best of him. He ignited real hope and became lucky: Hillary Clinton became overconfident, GWB became a bane as a lame duck, and John McCain self-destructed. Ergo Obama became the man. Like a true liberal, he relied on his brilliance and elite thinking with good intentions for being elected. This has now wrought him calamity. In politics, it can be most unforgiving.

Where is President Obama’s Carville or Rove or Atwater or kitchen cabinet like Reagan’s California friends and influential backers or even Carter’s Hamilton Jordan to be his path finder as the American political swamp begins to devour him? Obama, being a loner by nature, is now, as President, up against the forces of economic and political troubled waters. Who in his Cabinet or White House is taking hits for him?

The wrath and smite of an aggrieved people will shortly visit him unless Lady Luck returns. The sadness is his latent failure may beget or unleash the might of ugly extremists with all their mean-spiritedness, intolerance, bigotry, nativism, uncharitable attitude all wrapped around the flag and the visceral language of religious and patriotic righteousness. This is beginning to sweep aside even the responsible fiscal and security conservatives. Obama is no FDR, who was more a political animal of his day: a doer who surrounded himself with seminal thinkers at a time of dire crisis. Even President Lincoln, the self-educated loner at a horrific time, relied on his military chiefs to move forward to save the Union. His leadership flowed from the simplicity and genius of his words which reassured and guided his people. Whereas, President Obama sees himself as a true Athenian actor on a stage full of Wagnerian menaces and Cassandra-like shadows and at best some misguided Panglossian spirit.

Obama is not a disappointment. Perhaps he symbolizes a national frustration that the world is not an American ideal but a brutish reality. The Latino failure to understand the current national crisis will prevent us from being able to survive the impending vortex. Immigration as a litmus test and a primary political metric increasingly appears to be misplaced by many of our Latino leadership. For instance on Tuesday, Representative Gutierrez was arrested in front of the White House to protest the record number of deportations the Obama administration has executed. This kind of political statement in the middle of an economic meltdown may make it appear that we are singularly focused on immigration. Yet in this hour when the ship of state begins to list dangerously, where are the voices of our Hispanic chieftains on jobs, education and the general welfare? Their silence is impressive in opining on the national debt debate while the latest Pew Report alarmingly announces that Latinos have lost 66 percent of their wealth! This devastating statistic is clearly proof that our community is in a deep depression and not a recession. The hope can only be when and if our elected and non-elected leaders in fact open their mouths that they will readily improve the silence. The sound must be one of true LEADERSHIP not just cheering on the mismanagement of the nation.