Kamala Makes a Run for the Border—And Away From Her Past

Vice President Kamala Harris will make an appearance Friday at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, where she'll give a speech outlining her alleged support for tough border security measures. That speech, a preview of which the Harris campaign shared with Politico, will blame the border crisis on former president Donald Trump, who left office in 2021, and will contradict nearly every immigration position Harris has espoused prior to accepting the Democratic Party's nomination for president.

For instance, Harris will call for increased funding for border patrol agents and argue that "American sovereignty requires setting rules at the border and enforcing them." This would mark a stunning departure from the Biden-Harris administration's immigration policy, under which illegal border crossings from Mexico reached a record high in December 2023. The official Democratic Party platform, adopted at the party's convention in August, endorsed radical legislation crafted by the Biden-Harris administration that would provide amnesty and a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal aliens believed to be residing in the United States. The controversial bill, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act, would also invite illegal immigrants who were deported during the Trump administration to return to the United States and apply for amnesty and citizenship.

Harris's recently acquired affinity for enforcing rules at the border also contradicts the position she staked out during the 2020 Democratic primary, when she vowed to decriminalize illegal immigration. Her alleged support for border patrol agents is particularly galling given her behavior as vice president in 2021, when she falsely accused border agents on horseback of attacking migrants with whips. Harris said the images of border agents (who did not have whips and did not strike any migrant with their reins) recalled "some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the Indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during times of slavery." Harris never issued an apology or walked back her comments after the whips conspiracy was thoroughly debunked. A border patrol agent told the New York Post in July that Harris's false accusations made life "hell" for the agents involved and predicted the border crisis "will explode again" if Harris becomes president.

Liberal immigration activists, among others, aren't convinced that Harris's tough talk on immigration is sincere. "Some progressive groups are quietly hoping that Harris' tough-on-the-border rhetoric is just a posture to help her win in November—and that she'd govern closer to the more liberal stances she held during the 2020 Democratic primary," Axios reported this month. The Harris campaign declined to speak to Axios, but immigration activist Kerri Talbot said she trusts Harris "to make the right decisions when she's in office."

Harris's past positions on immigration, which she has refused to discuss beyond the vague declaration that her "values haven't changed," were firmly in line with the left-wing activist groups who demanded, among other things, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) be abolished. As a senator in 2018, Harris compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan, accusing the agency of "administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation." That same year, Harris signaled her support for abolishing ICE and "starting from scratch." As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris bragged about being "one of the first Senators after President Trump was elected to advocate for a decrease in funding to ICE" and promised to "end the unfair incarceration" of illegal immigrants.

Harris has also flip-flopped on Trump's border wall, which she denounced as "un-American" and a "medieval vanity project," as well as "a complete waste of taxpayer money [that] won't make us any safer." Since accepting her party's nomination, Harris has signaled her support for legislation that would allocate $650 million of taxpayer money to continue construction of the border wall. Her campaign won't say whether Harris still supports using taxpayer money to provide free sex-change operations for illegal immigrants, a position she outlined in response to a 2019 questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Several months after being sworn in as vice president, Harris humiliated herself while attempting to discuss the immigration crisis during an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News, who simply pointed out that Harris had yet to visit the U.S.-Mexico border since being tapped as White House "border czar." Harris claimed, "We've been to the border," which wasn't true. Holt pressed the issue until Harris snapped: "I—and I haven't been to Europe. And, I mean, I don't—I don't understand the point that you're making."

When it comes to immigration, or any other issue, Harris's strategy has been to rely on vague talking points and avoid unscripted questions about the radical policies she previously endorsed. Thus far, most journalists seem content to pretend that Harris's flip-flops on illegal immigration and border security represent a genuine evolution of her unchanging values. Trump has a different view. "For nearly four years, we have been living through the worst border crisis in the history of the world," the former president said Thursday. "There's never been anything like it, which has brought untold suffering, misery, and death upon our land. The architect of this destruction is Kamala Harris."

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