Vice President Kamala Harris loves portraying herself as a potentially tough leader, especially when it comes to border and immigration. Some of the most recent TV ads put a lot of emphasis on her time as a “border state prosecutor” who aggressively targeted criminal cartels and drug smugglers, but also her support for “the toughest border security bill in decades.”
That bill failed in the Senate in February and once again in May. The bill included $650 million for new border wall construction. Some images of the border wall built while Trump was president are also featured in the Harris ads.
However, Harris constantly criticized the wall over the years, describing it as an effort to both her and America’s values. In the book she wrote in 2019, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris defined the wall as “useless”, stating that it was “nothing more than a symbol, a monument that stands in opposition to everything I really value, as well as the fundamental values upon which this country was made.”
A CNN KFile review of Harris’ social media posts discovered that she criticized the border wall more than 40 times during Trump’s presidency. Moreover, she called it, among many other things, “stupid”, “useless”, and a “medieval vanity project.”
The more she tried to strengthen her image on the border, Harris now seems to embrace some policies she once opposed. Some of them include building more border walls and also making it much harder for migrants to come to the US seeking asylum.
Harris also tacked to the middle on various other issues, like no longer banning fracking or supporting the program Medicare for All. Before, her position fully supported these things, before being picked as Joe Biden’s vice presidential nominee. In a recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Harris declared that, despite her policy shifts, “her values haven’t changed.”
Immigration and the border are still some of the most significant vulnerabilities for Harris and the Democratic party, according to various national polls, even if the most recent polling would suggest that Harris managed to narrow the gap. However, not all border work stopped since Joe Biden took office.
Firstly, in 2021 and 2022, the administration kept working close to the border wall, in order to prevent flooding, complete what was left from prior construction of access roads, but also close “all the small gaps that are still open from prior construction activities and remediating incomplete gates.
Back in October 2023, the Biden administration allowed additional building of a border wall in Texas, with Biden stating that he had to use the money that was appropriated for the wall in 2019. He also explained that they weren’t able to redirect it.
Biden also explained to reporters that there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what was appropriated at the time. However, to respond to the questions posed by CNN, a Harris campaign aide declared that it was simply “inaccurate to imply a couple of images”, referencing the most recent campaign ad.
They also added that they are “somehow representative of the VP’s overall policy position on a more complex issue, especially when the entirety of the ad, the VP’s remarks as the nominee as well as the governance of this Administration have been clear where they stand on border security. They all supported bipartisan border agreement.”
Asylum shift
Besides extending funding for additional border barriers and hiring more federal immigration authorities, the border security bill that Harris vowed to sign as president would mainly bar migrants from seeking asylum, especially if they crossed the border unlawfully.
Many of those people who encounter Border Patrol agents right at the southern border are basically migrants who seek asylum and claim to be fleeing conflict or persecution in their own home country.
A CNN Kfile review of Harris’ comments from 2017 all the way through August 2020, right before Biden chose her as his running mate, unraveled that she repeatedly pledged to “honor the process” of asylum.
The process in question was established decades ago and it slammed various policies that restricted asylum seekers. Harris was also one of the seven US senators who signed onto an amicus brief back in late 2018, which supported a lawsuit filed by asylum seekers challenging a Trump administration rule that barred all asylum claims outside ports of entry.
“United States law is quite clear that men, women, and children who come to our borders can seek asylum.” the brief reiterated. “In our democratic system, laws can’t be overturned by Executive fiat.”
After that, a judge struck down that rule in August 2019, and soon after, the Trump administration lost its appeals. As running for president in 2019, Harris pledged to respect asylum law and called restricting asylum a “stain on our moral conscience.” Under her administration, “some issues like asylum, for instance, will honor the process and won’t try to expedite the process for the sake of some political goal, compared to the sake of justice and fairness.” Harris said.
She also reiterated the pledge in many of her tweets at that time, explaining that “as president, she will immediately put in place a meaningful process to review asylum cases. I will release children from cages and get rid of private detention centers.”
A year later, in June 2020, Harris was one of 34 senators who signed a congressional letter that criticized the Covid-era Title 42 authority, which basically allowed the government to bar migrants from entering the country because of the public health crisis.
The letter linked Trump’s asylum policies to the denial of safe passage to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. Right after Biden and Harris took office in 2021, the mass influx of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border strained US immigration resources to a great extent.
At first, the Biden-Harris administration kept Title 42 in place. In 2022, Republicans decided to sue to keep the administration from terminating Title 42, which it ultimately did in May 2023 when it announced the end of national Covid-era emergency restrictions.
As vice president, Harris received the task of overseeing diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration. Despite such a role, Harris’ current stance on asylum still marks quite a notable departure from her earlier promises to uphold the asylum process and protect vulnerable migrants. After Senate Republicans decided to abandon the border bill at the behest of Trump, the Biden administration took executive actions to restrict asylum.
Moreover, in June, Biden closed the deal on an executive order that barres migrants who cross the border illegally from seeking asylum once a daily threshold is reached, a notable departure from longstanding US asylum policy. As Harris has yet to publicly address her plans regarding asylum, her campaign manager mentioned that she will continue to implement Biden’s executive orders curbing asylum.
Continuously attacked the border wall
Throughout Donald Trump’s administration, Harris was a consistent critic of the border wall. In April 2018, Harris decided to sign a letter that urged the appropriations committee to reduce all funding for the border wall, as well as to halt hiring new Border Patrol agents.
CNN also identified one of the border walls in her newest campaign ads as built during Trump’s presidency in Sasabe, Arizona, a designated area where there hadn’t previously been border walls. The other wall features date all the way to Trump-era walls, like the so-called anti-climbing plates built in his years.
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