Who Would Win an Immigration Debate Between Sanders and Clinton? Martin O’Malley.

http://www.thenation.com/article/who-would-win-an-immigration-debate-between-sanders-and-clinton-martin-omalley/

 “Certainly compared to any of the other Democrats and all of the Republicans, [O’Malley’s platform] is so far more detailed and thorough than anyone else has been willing to express,” said Beth Werlin, director of policy at the Immigration Policy Center. Werlin said that on immigrant detention in particular, where O’Malley has proposed serious cutbacks, “he really goes out there in a level we haven’t seen from other candidates.”

Maryland activists say O’Malley’s leadership on immigration issues started with his time as mayor of Baltimore. “I remember in 2006 when we had a huge fight about the day laborer situation in Baltimore, O’Malley came to the town meeting with an attitude of: I’m going to resolve this,” Gustavo Torres, the executive director of CASA de Maryland, a statewide immigrant rights advocacy organization, told me. “Six months later we had a day laborer center.”

Torres ticked off the other issues O’Malley, as governor, later backed: driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants; Maryland’s state Dream Act, which allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition in public colleges; an initiative disentangling local law activities from immigration enforcement.