Vice President Kamala Harris is facing criticism for her sudden shift on immigration policy, just two months ahead of the November election, as voters identify immigration as their top concern.
Harris has been accused of being soft on border security since the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, refusing to visit border towns and failing to stem the flow of unauthorized immigrants. However, in a recent reversal, Harris has come out in support of stricter immigration policies, including increased funding for border security and Immigration Customs and Protection (ICE).
Harris’ past statements, in which she advocated for decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings, closing ICE detention centers, and potentially abolishing ICE, have come back to haunt her. In a recent statement to Fox News, Harris acknowledged that “unauthorized border crossings are illegal,” a significant departure from her previous stance.
The vice president has also signaled her support for a bipartisan bill aimed at bolstering border security and ICE, a move seen as an attempt to align herself with President Biden’s more moderate position. According to her campaign, Harris will prioritize “enforcing our laws and ensuring sufficient resources to detain and remove individuals who pose threats to public safety and national security.”
Harris has previously blamed former President Donald Trump for the immigration crisis, despite her administration’s own failure to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants. Now, she is attempting to rebrand herself as a champion of border security, without acknowledging her own role in the crisis.
The Harris campaign has accused Trump of exploiting the issue for personal gain, rather than seeking solutions. However, Harris’s own record on immigration has been marked by inconsistency, including her 2017 denunciation of the border wall as a “stupid waste of money” and her recent suggestion that she would sign a bill expanding the wall.
Recent campaign ads have attempted to rebrand Harris as a tough-on-immigration “border-state prosecutor,” a claim that has been met with skepticism given her past statements and actions.
