page_title: Cory Booker 2020 presidential campaign
section_title: Immigration
hierarchical_section_title: Cory Booker 2020 presidential campaign / Political positions / Immigration
caption_attribution_description: English: IMG_9803. Cory Booker at a pro-Obamacare health care rally. In the background are supporters of Planned Parenthood.
context_page_description: The 2020 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Cory Booker was announced on February 1, 2019, when a video titled "We Will Rise" was posted on Booker's YouTube channel. He intentionally chose the first day of Black History Month to announce his candidacy. Booker suspended his campaign on January 13, 2020. He endorsed Joe Biden in March 2020.
  Booker was widely expected to run for president.
  His idealistic rhetoric and vocal defense for the rights of black people, women, and LGBT people in hearings dating back to 2017 had been seen as positioning for a 2020 run.
  Booker had been openly considering a presidential bid as early as September 2018, and told his supporters that he would make a decision during the winter holidays.
context_section_description: Among Booker's stances on immigration, he believes immigrant detention should be eliminated to the extent possible. He has written that America needs to guarantee hormone therapy for transgender asylum seekers that have been detained.
  Regarding immigration detention, a joint letter dated June 2015 by 33 senators (including Gillibrand, Warren, and Sanders) criticized that as "unacceptable and goes against our most fundamental values".
  In July 2018, Booker was among 11 senators to sign a letter requesting the agencies responsible for reuniting families provide weekly updates, until every separated child was returned to their parents, in the form of a list of separated children, a list of their parents and other adult members of their families in addition to a list connecting the lists of children and parents and a briefing for the lawmakers on the strategies used to reunite families, and was 1 of 22 senators to sponsor the Stop Shackling and Detaining Pregnant Women Act, which if enacted would prohibit immigration officers from detaining pregnant women in a majority of circumstances and improve conditions of care for individuals in custody.
  In January 2019, Booker was 1 of 21 senators to sponsor the Dreamer Confidentiality Act, a bill imposing a ban on the DHS from passing information collected on DACA recipients to ICE, CBP, the DOJ, or any other law enforcement agency with exceptions in the case of fraudulent claims, national security issues, or non-immigration related felonies being investigated.
  In a TV interview, he was asked what the people should do,
  ... the appalling silence and inaction of the good people ... First of all, understand. I have said this for years. The "power of the people" is greater than "the people in power". And, the most common way that the people surrender their power is not recognizing they have in the first place. So, the first thing to do is just not to be silent. The second thing is that when I went down to the border, I was blown away by the volunteers I saw showing up there, the people that were willing to go out, literally walk out onto the bridges where people are trying to do the legal thing and present them out for asylum ... Change does not come from Washington, it comes to Washington. They can call, they can protest, they can serve, they can volunteer, they can give resources...
  
  Booker opined that the federal government's inability to construct the Trump wall, for which president Trump declared a national emergency situation, is not an emergency.
caption: Booker at a rally opposing the American Health Care Act of 2017
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