In 2008, standing in front of voters in Mishawaka, Indiana, Hillary Clinton said this about illegal immigrants: "If they've committed a crime, deport them. No questions asked. They're gone."

Eighteen years later, she'd like you to forget she ever said that. In fact, she'll say the opposite now.

Clinton resurfaced this week — just in time for midterm season — to accuse the Trump administration of using immigration enforcement as racial targeting. Her exact words, "You know, when I was in the Senate, I was for deporting criminals. That's not what this is about. This is a systematic effort to try to rid the country of people that don't look like them."

The former Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator from New York, is not arguing that deportation policy is too broad or that due process needs strengthening. She's saying the entire enforcement apparatus exists because of race. "People that don't look like them." That's the sitting-out-loud version of what Democrats usually keep behind closed doors.

But the race accusation doesn't square with the woman who cast the vote. In 2006, Senator Clinton voted yes on the Secure Fence Act — the bill that authorized 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, along with vehicle barriers, checkpoints, surveillance technology, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The Senate passed it 80 to 19. Clinton was one of 26 Democratic senators who supported it, alongside Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer. President George W. Bush signed it into law.

So when Clinton was voting for physical barriers, surveillance drones, and checkpoints along a border that is, by geography, shared with a majority-Latino nation — that was fine. That was policy. But when the Trump administration enforces existing immigration law by removing people who entered illegally, suddenly the motive is skin color.

The accusation answers itself when you apply it backward. If deporting illegal immigrants is inherently racist, then Clinton's 2006 fence vote was racist. Her 2008 "no questions asked" deportation stance was racist. The 26 Democrats who voted with her were racist. Barack Obama — whose administration deported more people than any president before him — was apparently running a racist operation out of the Oval Office.

There's a pattern here that goes beyond one podcast appearance. Clinton tried this frame during her 2016 campaign, when she called half of Trump's supporters "deplorables." The argument hasn't changed — only the vocabulary. "Deplorable" targeted the voters. "People that don't look like them" targets the officials. Same accusation: anyone who enforces immigration law is motivated by bigotry, not policy.

The Secure Fence Act passed the Senate 80 to 19. Hillary Clinton voted yes. She didn't add an asterisk.