Vice President Kamala Harris’s record on the border has been a hot topic in the days since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
And to date, much of the debate has been about whether or not she oversaw the Biden administration’s disastrous immigration policy and could be fairly characterized as its “border czar.”
As I pointed out yesterday, this discourse is mostly a distraction. Even if you might submit that she had a more limited role than Republicans have described her as having, she failed in it. Moreover, her narrow task was emblematic of the Democrats’ failed approach to addressing the border crisis. Addressing “root causes” has never and will never be enough.
But what of Harris’s personal views on the subject? As it turns out, the last time Harris ran for president, she did so as an open borders ideologue.
The vice president has long held radical views on immigration. In 2015, she mused that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal” in plain contravention of the law; it is in fact an illegal act to enter and stay in the country without authorization.
It only gets worse from there. While laying the groundwork for her 2020 campaign, Harris compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Ku Klux Klan during a Senate hearing.
“Are you aware of the perception of many about what, how the power and the discretion that ICE is being used to enforce the laws and do you see any parallels [to the KKK]?” she asked a nominee to head the agency.
Watch as Kam…oops, sorry Jen! Watch as Harris makes this absurd comparison of the “perception” between ICE and the KKK. And it’s natural for people who crossed the border illegally to be afraid of getting caught. There is a ton of this stuff out there.
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) July 26, 2024
That same year, she signaled her openness to abolishing ICE.
“Is that a position that you agree with?” she was asked during an interview with MSNBC.
“Listen, I think that there’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE, and it’s role, and the way that it is being administered, and what it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch,” replied Harris.
FLASHBACK: Kamala Harris wants to abolish ICE:
“I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE, and its role, and the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”
Video from… pic.twitter.com/ssrLreycwA
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 22, 2024
She built upon these positions as a candidate, promising to use the power of the presidency to grant mass amnesty, decriminalize the act of crossing the border, and offer “free” healthcare — paid for by American taxpayers — to everyone regardless of immigration status. Can you imagine a more enticing laundry list of incentives likely to compel people to make the dangerous and unlawful attempt at crossing into the country outside of official channels?
So however you might describe Harris’s role in the Biden administration, there is no denying that the radical positions she’s expressed on behalf of herself are wildly out of step with the American public.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
