Should Cecilia Muñoz Resign Her Post At The White House?

Cecilia Muñoz, a high ranking Latina in the Obama Administration, is under fire. She’s the  Director of  White House Intergovernmental Affairs, and as such represents the President and his policies, as all White House staffers do. It comes with the job. The fact that there would be people who would not like some of those policies comes with the job as well. This case, though, has a twist.

Before joining the White House, in 2009, Muñoz worked for the National Council of La Raza where she was an advocate for immigrant rights. But in her new role in the President’s administration she has defended Obama’s Secure Communities program, that requires local police to provide federal immigration officials with the fingerprints of all the people they arrest. Immigration advocates don’t like this program and one of the more vocal ones – Presente.org – wants Muñoz to decry the policy. She hasn’t, in fact she’s defended it.

Recently, in The White House Blog, Muñoz wrote:

Under the President’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security for the first time ever has prioritized the removal of people who have been convicted of crimes in the United States. The Secure Communities Program, which relies on a federal information sharing program that utilizes FBI fingerprint checks conducted by law enforcement officials as they fight crime in their communities, is central to this strategy.  It is the primary reason that the deportation statistics show a dramatic increase in the number of criminals deported from the United States.

So now, the host of a Denver AM radio show, Mario Solis-Marich, is calling for Muñoz to resign.

What’s the right thing to do?

Let me tell you what I did yesterday, it’s pertinent. As a Dia de los Muertos ritual I visited my grandfather’s grave in San Antonio’s West Side. I took a scrapbook with pictures and clippings and such, and a cigar. His name was Juan Esquivel; everyone called him Johnny. He loved cigars. So I smoked at his graveside, looked over the memories and chatted a little. In the scrapbook is a letter he wrote in April of 1950. He had been appointed to serve in a citizens school survey committee to list priorities for the spending of bond money. He was a successful business man, active in his community and in local and state politics, and he was the only Latino on the committee. His aim was to direct money to schools in the Latino West Side – he wanted to build a library at Storm Elementary; it didn’t have one in those days.

The committee, though, had other plans. With the excuse of curtailing spending they funneled the money to affluent, white, North Side schools.  Johnny Esquivel resigned in protest – a very, very gutsy thing to do at the time. It made headlines.

See, Papa Grande, as we call him, was an education advocate. He founded a scholarship event in San Antonio in the 1940’s that continues to this day, he made no apologies for his convictions and went where they led him. He was also a good businessman – he owned a successful radiator repair shop and learned to work and rub shoulders with influentials of the time to help his business. But the blatant discrimination of the survey committee crossed a moral line.

Sometimes you have to take a stand for what you believe. U.S. Latinos have been doing it for generations. Does it change things? Not in the literal, immediate, expected way. The survey committee went on to do what they set out to do without Papa Grande in their ranks. And the Obama administration will do what it will with or without Muñoz, but that’s not the point.

It’s a point of personal integrity. 

Can Muñoz be more effective by remaining in her position to fight another fight? Yes, there is that. But she was an immigration advocate immediately before joining the White House. So the question is, can she be effective in other fights if she loses her credibility in the Latino community? Does it matter?

Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, has come out in Muñoz’ defense. He was quoted in an article in New American Media:

“A lot of leaders in the immigrant rights community wanted to make sure that the debate (over Cecilia Muñoz) does not become a distraction from the real issues at hand: the way the administration is enforcing the law,” explained Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.
“The administration’s policies are causing real harm and suffering and they need to be changed,” said Bhargava. “Cecilia is not the cause of those bad policies, and we are confident that she is doing everything she can to improve them.”

So far, Muñoz has not indicated that she will resign.