SAN DIEGO — The Obama Presidential Center — which bills itself as a "one-of-a-kind destination featuring exhibitions, gardens, and public spaces" — is now welcoming visitors to its 19.3-acre campus on the South Side of Chicago.

Unlike other presidential libraries — which display personal exhibits and store physical records — the Obama center is designed as a "dynamic community space" that can be enjoyed by everyday Americans. Naturally, it includes a museum where a wide array of exhibits tell the inspiring story of the 44th president.

However, at least one aspect of that story is not so inspirational.

In handling the immigration issue, former President Barack Obama failed spectacularly. Even though he used executive power to create the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults to stay here temporarily, he did more harm than good.

As to why, take your pick. Maybe he didn't understand the issue and had zero interest in learning about it. Or maybe he was hampered by the fact that he saw immigrants as a threat to blue-collar U.S. workers. Or maybe Obama was — like his fellow Democrat, former President Bill Clinton — an immigration restrictionist at heart.

In 2007, while in the Senate, Obama tried to undermine a landmark immigration reform bill by voting for multiple "poison pill" amendments intended to scare off Republican support and scuttle the legislation. He would later brag about his efforts to pass immigration reform, and he got called out by fellow senators who knew otherwise.

As president, Obama tried to be both tough and compassionate, but he spent so much time on the first that — in eight years, across two terms — he never got around to the second. He broke his 2008 campaign promise to make a priority of comprehensive immigration reform, which would have included a pathway to earned legal status for the undocumented; instead, he put the issue so far on the back burner that it fell completely off the stove for his entire time in office.

Meanwhile, Obama went overboard on enforcement by wildly expanding the program known as Secure Communities, which roped local and state police officers into the enforcement of federal immigration law by requiring them to use fingerprints to check the immigration status of anyone they arrested. Then, local authorities are supposed to wait for U.S. immigration officials to pick up the migrant.

By Obama's second term, Secure Communities was operational in every jail and prison in the United States.

In 2010, Obama also signed the Southwest Border Security Bill, which provided an additional $600 million for enhanced border security, including the hiring of more Border Patrol agents.

In 2014, he was forced to confront a refugee crisis when tens of thousands of men, women and children from Central America showed up at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Obama Department of Homeland Security abandoned due process, separated families, put children in cages, and turned around thousands of people at the border without a hearing to see if they qualified for asylum.

In eight years, Obama deported more than 3 million people, earning him the title "deporter-in-chief." He also set the stage for Trump's Immigration Armageddon by showing the misdeeds and shenanigans that a president could get away with when it came to immigration enforcement.

For its sins, the Obama administration was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union — which would later bring suit against President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden on similar grounds.

In the brochure, America presents itself as the land of endless opportunity and second chances, where people can wipe the slate and start over. One person who took Uncle Sam up on his offer was Barack Obama, Sr., an economist in the Kenyan government. In 1959, he received a scholarship that allowed him to come to the United States and enroll at the University of Hawaii. There, the visiting foreign student met Ann Dunham, whom he later married. In August 1961, their son — and future president of the United States — was born in Honolulu.

It's one of the ironies of the life story of Barack Obama Jr. that someone whose father was foreign-born would grow up to be one of the most anti-immigrant presidents in modern U.S. history.

Democratic activists did not see that coming. Even now, when that shameful legacy is staring them in the face, they still refuse to see.

This is one story you won't find at the Obama Presidential Center. But without hearing it, you'll never understand the full totality of former President Barack Obama — including the terrible things he helped set in motion.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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