The office of Arizona Republican Rep. Martha McSally has removed from public view a video on YouTube of her defending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
McSally is currently running in the Republican primary to replace retiring Sen. Jeff Flake against former state senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who are both hardliners on immigration.
A press release from her office in June 2017, before her Senate bid, highlighted McSally’s questioning of then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly about immigration and border issues at a House committee hearing.
The release said that McSally questioned Kelly on the department’s plan to address DACA, and whether Kelly could assure her that DACA recipients would be protected from deportation.
“These children were brought here at no fault of their own. In Arizona, there are 57,000 of them,” McSally said in the release. “Uncertainty brings fear to my constituents in this position. Can you assure me that they will be protected?”
Kelly assured her they would not be targeted for deportation.
The press release embedded a YouTube video of that interaction below a line that says, “to watch the exchange from the hearing, click below,” but the YouTube video has since been made unavailable for viewing, meaning the video has been made private or deleted. Two other videos from the hearing also included in the press release, neither DACA-related, are still available and online.
Representatives of McSally’s office and her Senate campaign did not respond to CNN’s multiple requests for comment.
Videos embedded in press releases put out by McSally’s congressional office are hosted on a YouTube account managed by her office. If a video was removed by a third party, then YouTube would indicate that is what happened.
In April 2017, McSally co-sponsored legislation that would provide legal status to some children of undocumented immigrants, but after deciding to run for senate in Arizona, she asked that she be removed as a co-sponsor last month.
She has since co-authored a more conservative bill which would not include a path to citizenship for DACA eligible immigrants and would also curb legal immigration numbers.