Following his performance in last week’s presidential debate, there have been growing calls among Democrats for President Biden to step aside and support another candidate, raising the possibility of Kamala Harris becoming president, but also raising questions about how she would handle the ongoing border crisis.
Many Democrats and liberal media outlets were upset by President Biden’s performance in last week’s debate. He stumbled and looked tired. This has sparked debate about whether President Biden should step down and nominate another candidate. If President Biden steps down from the presidency, Vice President Harris will automatically take over. If President Biden completes his term but does not want to serve a second term, the Democratic National Committee will select a new candidate for the presidential election. In that case, Harris will likely be one of the leading candidates.
Whoever Biden replaces him will be immediately tasked with addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border, which has seen a record number of encounters since Biden took office. The numbers have declined in recent months, but it’s unclear how long that will last during the typically busy summer months.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling around the country on her Economic Opportunity Tour. (Lee Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Vice President Harris will in many ways represent a continuity of current practice in what officials are calling the Biden-Harris Administration. Like President Biden, she has supported the reversal of Trump-era border policies and has called for a comprehensive immigration bill that the administration introduced on its first day. The bill not only contains important reforms and funding measures, but would also provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.
“Our immigration system has been broken for decades, which is why President Biden and I have spent the past three years laying out solutions to fix our system and address the root causes of migration,” she said in a February statement.
Similarly, Harris supports a bipartisan Senate bill that Biden also supported but failed to pass in the Senate. Like Biden, Harris blames former President Donald Trump for the bill’s failure to pass the Senate.
“Then, of course, I know there was a bipartisan effort, including the participation of some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate. A deal was made, and Donald Trump called me and said, ‘Please don’t bring it to a vote,’ because Donald Trump would rather run a campaign on issues than solve them,” she said last month.
Harris has also taken the lead on several policy issues: In 2021, she was tasked with leading a diplomatic effort to address the “root causes” of migration in Northern Triangle countries.
The administration had stuck to its root cause theory in early 2021, arguing that factors like climate change, violence, poverty, and economic insecurity were driving migration to the U.S. border, so the administration’s answer was to work with governments to invest in targeting those causes and ultimately reduce migration.
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June 6, 2024: Migrants line up at the southern border in San Diego. (Fox News)
The role quickly led to Harris being dubbed “secretary for border affairs,” though the White House rejected the title, stressing instead that it had more to do with international engagement. Harris visited the border in El Paso in June 2021, despite pressure.
In that mission, she has had some success: The project, which aims to mobilize private investment in the region through calls to action, has seen more than $5.2 billion invested by more than 50 companies and organizations since May 2021. And while it’s unclear how much of a role investment has played, the number of visits from those three countries has fallen from more than 700,000 in FY21 to less than 330,000 as of May, with four months remaining in the year.
Harris’ 2019 presidential campaign suggested that if elected president, she might try to use executive action to provide protections to some undocumented immigrants.
Harris pledged to use executive order to expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects illegal immigrants brought to the US as minors. She said she would remove the age limit for applications and use her parole authority to create a “parole-on-trial” program to put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. The campaign estimates that the executive order would open the path to citizenship for more than 2 million “Dreamers.”
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By executive order, she also promised to protect the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and green card holders from deportation. Overall, her plan was expected to protect more than six million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Parole power was recently used by President Biden to protect some spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation. In a statement on the measure, Harris said she supports it but added that there is still much to be accomplished, including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
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“Today’s action is a major step forward, but there is much more to be done to repair our broken immigration system, including creating a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. President Biden and I continue to call on the United States Congress to join us in passing legislation to provide permanent protections for Dreamers,” she said.
