19:49

Hillary Clinton and New York representative Nydia Velázquez wave during a rally in Brooklyn. Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

“My very first experience with Latinos, with Hispanics, I was about 11 years old,” Hillary Clinton said during a rally in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on Saturday that was billed as a Latino organizing event.

At the time, Clinton said, recounting a story she has shared before on the campaign trail, Chicago was surrounded by farmland. Clinton described how migrant farmworkers from Mexico would come to harvest the crops.

Through her church, Clinton said, she volunteered with a friend to babysit the children of the migrants while their parents and older siblings worked in the field. At the end of the day, a bus made its way down the long, dirt road leading to the shanties where the migrant workers stayed.

“When those little children saw that bus … they started running down the road,” Clinton said. “As the door of the bus opened and the parents were coming off, kids were throwing themselves into their parents’ arms. And I just stood there thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s what I used to do when I was a little kid when my father would come home. I would run and hold out my arms.’ And I thought: ‘These are people just like me, these are people who have the same values.’”

The crowd burst into applause. Clinton promised she would fight for comprehensive immigration reform in her first 100 days in office. She noted that her opponent, Bernie Sanders, had voted against a 2007 bill supported by the Democratic senator Ted Kennedy and the Republican senator John McCain, a bill she called the “best chance in the past” to pass immigration reform.

Democrats have long courted Latino voters in presidential elections, but this time the vote is expected to be especially consequential, as the Republican frontrunner has made building a wall on the border with Mexico the lynchpin of his campaign.

Clinton said she look forward to running against whoever emerges as the Republican nominee – Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

“Both of them have really put anti-immigration statements at the core of their campaigns,” she said. “Donald Trump started his campaign calling immigrants rapists and criminals and he’s gone on from there. So this is an issue that I am committed to.”

Clinton was introduced by congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the US House of Representatives. She applauded the former secretary of state for doing “so much for women, for Latinos!”

Before Clinton arrived on stage, guests were treated to a performance by Puerto Rican singer Toby Love, who serenaded the crowd with the rhythmic bachata beat.

“We gotta get Hillary Clinton into that White House,” Love implored the crowd, adding: “I’m speaking to you as a Latino, as a Puerto Rican.”