“We don’t need border patrol but, [the] issue with even talking about immigration here in Ohio is that it’s a losing issue for Democrats.”
A campaign staffer who has worked for two Ohio congressional candidates was caught on video saying he supports open borders and that the only reason it is a "losing issue" for Democrats in Ohio is because of "racism."
“Like me, I’m out there, like open the f*cking border, I don’t give a sh*t who comes in here," the staffer, identified and first reported by ohio.news as Kevin Oyakawa, can be heard on video in a conversation earlier in October.
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View on X"We don’t need border patrol but, [the] issue with even talking about immigration here in Ohio is that it’s a losing issue for Democrats here, for like no f*cking reason other than people’s pure racism," said Oyakawa, who posted on Facebook that he was hired by the Ohio Coordinated Campaign to "re-elect Sherrod Brown, Congresswoman Emilia Sykes, and other down ballot Democratic candidates.
"That’s why," Oyakawa explains, "It’s probably really hard to find anything about like where she [Sykes] stands on it. In terms of the way that she talks with the public, if she has to start talking about immigration, she starts losing."
Oyakawa's LinkedIn page was deleted on Thursday, but prior to then it described him as a regional organizing director in Ohio for the Ohio Democratic Party, per Fox News.
He could be seen in photos on social media assisting the campaigns of both Sykes and Brown while a now-deleted Facebook post says he is "responsible for leading a team of field organizers on day to day operations of the campaign" in Summit and Stark counties.
The Sykes campaign made a statement to Fox "Congresswoman Emilia Sykes has worked to deliver increased funding to help secure our border and stop the flow of illegal drugs like fentanyl. She also cosponsored the bipartisan Dignity Act that would address border security and infrastructure, all while her opponent Kevin Coughlin uses the border to play politics."
Oyakawa might not care about an open southern border or the attendant illegal immigration, but millions of Americans believe it is top issue for the election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. According to a report from the Washington DC-based non-profit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), federal, state and municipal governments paid $150 billion in order to accommodate illegal immigration in 2023.
In a recent interview with Telemundo, Harris appeared to advocate for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the US, however, Trump has consistently spoken about deportations as a necessary policy.
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