Hillary Clinton hugs sobbing girl worried that her parents are to be deported

Politicians are used to dealing with tough questions, but crying children in public are another matter - they also provide a fabulous opportunity to improve one's likeability.

Speaking in Las Vegas this week about her plans to reform immigration policy, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was faced with a tearful 10-year-old Latino girl.

“My parents, they have a letter of deportation. I’m scared for them because they have the deportation. I’m scared they are going to be deported,” she said, bursting into tears.

“Come here, babe,” Ms Clinton said, as the audience clapped. The Democrat put an arm around her waist and told her she would do “everything [she] can do to help."

“I’m going to do everything I can so you don’t have to be scared,” she told her. ”And you don’t have to worry about what happens to your mom, or your dad, or somebody else in your family. I feel really, really strongly, but you’re being very brave.“

The touching moment has been used for Ms Clinton’s most recent campaign video ahead of the caucus in Nevada on Saturday.

Ms Clinton has vowed to keep immigrant families together and to close private immigration detention centers. Specifically, she has pledged to provide deportation relief for parents of Americans and lawful residents, and “extend the actions to additional persons with sympathetic causes as well”, according to her campaign.

“I’ll do the worrying, deal?” she said in the video, and the little girl nodded.

Ms Clinton has upped her stance on prominent issues like immigration and racism - although she insisted in Harlem this week that these issues have always been close to her heart - in an attempt to hammer home her policies before the South Carolina primary.

The advert, paid for by Ms Clinton’s campaign, shows other members of the audience in Las Vegas wiping away tears as she talks to the girl. The Democrat was speaking to a group of immigrants who might benefit from President Obama's plan of "deferred action" for immigrant children and their families.

Her actions echoes a similar move in July 2015 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who comforted a little girl from Palestine who said, in fluent German, that she wished to go to university in Germany and not back to her home country.

Ms Merkel said she wanted to hug the girl and told her: “[…] we don’t want to put you into such a situation, because this is hard for you and because you have done a very good job f showing to many others how one can get into such a situation.”

The video went viral and showed the more human side of Ms Merkel, who has been faced with a massive influx of refugees after turmoil in the Middle East and Africa.

Ms Clinton’s campaign said that she signed the bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013 and, unlike her rival Bernie Sanders, in 2007 too.

Bernie Sanders has also upped the ante on racial justice reform, releasing a powerful campaign video last week which featured the daughter of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed by a police chokehold in 2014.