Vice President Kamala Harris will face intense scrutiny in the coming months after becoming the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee on Sunday, with conservative critics already focusing on her past comments on immigration and the border crisis.
Harris was thrust into the spotlight on Sunday after President Biden said he would not seek reelection in November and would support Vice President Harris.
Harris’ most high-profile role on immigration came in 2021 when she was tapped by President Biden to lead the diplomatic effort to address immigration issues. The “root causes” of migration In Northern Triangle countries, she has been dubbed a “border czar” by Republicans, a charge the White House denies.
Harris won’t discuss ‘root causes’ with Border Patrol chief as migrant crisis continues
Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling around the country on her Economic Opportunity Tour. (Lee Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As part of her duties, Harris will visit Mexico and Guatemala in 2021, and also visit the southern border in 2021. El Paso, TexasThe project, which aims to spark private investment in the region through a call to action, has seen more than $5.2 billion invested by more than 50 companies and organizations since May 2021. Visits from the three countries have fallen from more than 700,000 in fiscal year 2021 to more than 330,000 so far this fiscal year, but it is not clear how much of that is related to her efforts.
But with the border crisis still ongoing, Republicans and conservatives are already resurfacing Harris’ broader positions on immigration outside of her role as vice president. Within an hour of Biden leaving office, the Republican National Committee posted a video of Harris saying she considered abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2018.
“I think there’s no question that we need to critically reexamine ICE and its role, how it’s managed and what it does,” she told MSNBC. “And maybe we need to think about starting from scratch.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee pointed to those remarks, as well as her earlier pledge to decriminalize border crossing, in a memo obtained by Fox News. The committee also called Harris a “border czar” and noted her past support for the Biden administration’s efforts to open a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The Biden-Harris campaign did not respond to questions about Harris’ record.
“Candidates should not be shy about aggressively tying their opponents to Kamala Harris’ extreme policies,” the memo said.
Former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf linked his own record to that of the Biden administration as a whole.
Migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border are processed by U.S. Border Patrol near Jacumba Hot Springs in San Diego on June 13, 2024. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
“Let’s not forget that VP Harris has only visited the border once in the last 3.5 years. The Biden-Harris Administration is not taking this issue seriously and their policies are making Americans less safe and more vulnerable,” he said in a post on X.
Flashback: Senator Kamala Harris compares ICE to the KKK during Senate hearing
Others have pointed to tense exchanges during the November 2018 confirmation hearing of Ronald Vitiello, Trump’s nominee to head ICE, and asked whether he was aware of “perceptions” that ICE was similar to the Ku Klux Klan.
“Are you aware of many people’s perceptions of how ICE’s power and discretion is used to enforce the law? And are there any similarities?” she asked.
Vitiello fired back, saying he “does not see any parallels between immigration enforcement agencies and white supremacist groups.”
During her presidential campaign, Harris promised to “end all government contracts with private prisons.” ICE Enforcement.
NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reducing immigration overall, highlighted Ms Harris’ immigration voting record as a California senator, for which it gave her an F-minus grade.
“Kamala Harris has been tasked with destroying immigration enforcement. From day one, she has been working to abolish ICE,” RJ Howman, director of the National Immigration Enforcement Center and visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. “Everything Kamala Harris has said and done so far proves she is caving to the demands of far-left open border activists. In November, Americans will be faced with a clear choice: mass deportations or the mass release of illegal immigrants and violent criminals into American communities.”
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The grilling of Harris came a week after Republicans took an aggressive stance on immigration enforcement at the Republican National Convention, with attendees holding signs that read “Mass Deportations Now!”
Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
