Caitlyn Jenner, the California GOP gubernatorial candidate, said she supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and that the surge of migrants at the southern border prompted her to seek higher office.
“I am for legal immigration, okay,” Jenner told CNN in a new interview airing Monday night. “What’s been happening on the border was honestly one of the reasons I decided to run for governor. I was watching people dying come across the river, kids in cages – whatever you want to call them.”
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, she said that she has “met some of the most wonderful people who are immigrants, who have come to this country and they are just model citizens.”
“They are just great people and I would fight for them to be U.S. citizens,” Jenner said.
Jenner said deportations should be focused on those with criminal records, affiliations with the MS-13 gang and, as she said, “the list goes on.”
“It’s a lot of bad people that are trying to cross our border illegally,” she said. “I don’t want those people in our country.”
Jenner is seeking to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. While at least 1.62 million signatures were collected to spur the recall in response to Newsom’s pandemic restriction measures, the sitting governor remains well-positioned to defeat the effort — unlike Democratic predecessor Gray Davis in a 2003 recall there.
Jenner endorsed then-candidate Donald Trump for president in 2016 but renounced her support in 2018, writing in a Washington Post editorial, “I was wrong.”