Vice President Kamala Harris did a 180-degree U-turn on her views on prosecuting illegal border crossers during her highly anticipated first interview since becoming the Democratic Party's official presidential nominee.
CNN host Dana Bash asked Harris on Thursday if she still believed illegal border crossings should be prosecuted, something Harris indicated she was against while running her 2019 campaign to become president.
“I think there should be consequences,” Harris told Bash. “We have laws that need to be followed and enforced to address and deal with people who cross our border illegally… And let's be clear, in this race, I'm the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations that traffic in guns, drugs, and human beings. I'm the only person in this race who actually served as attorney general of a border state to enforce our laws. And I would enforce our laws as president going forward.”
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Unaccompanied minors walk toward U.S. Border Patrol vehicles after crossing from Mexico on May 9, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Harris' comments Thursday stand in contrast to what she has said and done in the past regarding illegal immigration, particularly when it comes to illegal border crossings.
In addition to indicating during a nationally televised debate that she would not pursue people who have crossed the border illegally for prosecution, Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015 that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She also posted the assertion on social media. And in an exchange with the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, during a 2019 episode of “The View,” Harris reiterated her stance.
“I wouldn't make it a jailable offence,” he said. “It should be a matter of civil enforcement, not criminal enforcement.”
As a U.S. senator, Harris tried to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And as California attorney general, she ordered local law enforcement not to follow ICE detainers when they request that someone who has committed a crime and crossed the border illegally be held until they can be detained for deportation proceedings.
Harris has also compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan.
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Fox News Digital spoke to critics who called Harris' comments “disingenuous” and “for electioneering purposes only.” (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital spoke to two conservative immigration law experts who called his comments “disingenuous” and “for election purposes only.”
“If anyone cares about enforcing our laws as they relate to the border, you would think they would be part of and lead an administration that prosecutes enough crimes related to illegal border crossing,” said Gene Hamilton, director of America First Legal, a right-wing legal group founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
“Justice Department prosecutions for border-related crimes are at an all-time low. They're lower than even the Obama years, and that's saying something.”
Hamilton, who served as an adviser to the Justice Department attorney general during former President Trump's administration, argued that a key metric in determining how seriously an administration takes border security is the number of illegal border crossings compared to the number of people deported.
Last year, there were 2.4 million illegal border crossings, according to Justice Department data, Hamilton said.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department prosecuted about 20,000 such violations.
“You know, the numbers speak for themselves,” Hamilton argued. He also noted that in 2019, under the Trump administration, there were fewer illegal border crossings than the country faced in 2023, but the Trump administration still prosecuted more than five times the number of people who crossed the border illegally than the Biden-Harris administration will in 2023.
“As she said last night in her interview, her values haven't changed. She said it over and over again,” said Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center on Border Security and Immigration. “She's saying to her base, 'Look, don't worry about what the campaign is saying right now. We just have to say that to try to get elected. But my values haven't changed.'”
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Vice President Kamala Harris raised eyebrows when she told CNN's Dana Bash that her “values haven't changed” after making a complete U-turn on the far-left positions she held in 2019. (Screenshot/CNN)
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Ries criticized the Biden-Harris administration for “misleading” the American public, but argued that the Harris campaign is “taking it to another level” by denying that Harris was chosen to be border czar and pretending that she is not in power and cannot enact tougher measures at the border.
“She's in power right now. If she really meant it, she would do it now, and she's not. But pretending that you're not in power or in office right now is a higher level of psychological manipulation,” Ries said. “I think this is just for electoral purposes.”
Hamilton echoed that statement, calling Harris' comments Thursday “disingenuous.”
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Fox News Digital repeatedly reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
