KFile: Harris shifts to center on border wall, asylum policy in contradiction to her longstanding progressive immigration positions

By Andrew Kaczynski, Em Steck and Daniel Medina, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris likes to portray herself as a fighter against the border and immigration.

Recent TV ads highlight her time as a “border state prosecutor” who aggressively targeted criminal cartels and drug smugglers, and express support for “the toughest border security law in decades.”

That bill, which was defeated in the Senate in February and again in May, included $650 million for construction of a new border wall. Images of the border wall built during the Trump administration have appeared in Harris’s ads, but Harris has repeatedly criticized the wall over the years, describing it as an affront to both her and America’s values.

In her 2019 book, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris called the wall “useless” and said it was “nothing more than a symbol, a monument that not only stands against everything I hold dear, but against the fundamental values on which this country was built.”

A CNN KFile investigation into Harris’ social media posts found that she criticized the border wall more than 50 times during the Trump administration, calling it “stupid,” “useless” and a “medieval vanity project,” among other things.

As she tries to shore up her image at the border, Harris will have to reckon with her longstanding opposition to some of the policies she now embraces, including building more border walls and making it harder for migrants to come to the U.S. to seek asylum.

Harris has moved more to the center on other key issues, such as no longer banning fracking or supporting Medicare for All — positions she once supported before being chosen as Joe Biden’s vice presidential nominee.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday, Harris said that despite her policy changes, “my values haven’t changed.”

According to some national polls, immigration and the border remain a major vulnerability for Harris and the Democratic Party. Recent polls, however, suggest that Harris has managed to narrow the gap.

Not all border work stopped during the Biden administration.

In 2021 and 2022, the government continued work on the border wall to prevent flooding, complete previous construction of access roads and “close small gaps left open by previous construction activities and repair unfinished gates.”

In October 2023, the Biden administration authorized construction of an additional border wall in Texas. Biden said he would have to use the money appropriated for the wall in 2019 and could not reinvest the money.

“I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to divert that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s no other option but for them to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office at the time.

In response to questions from CNN, a Harris campaign aide said, referring to the recent campaign ad, that it was “incorrect to suggest that a few images” “are somehow representative of the vice president’s overall policy position on a complex issue, when the entire ad, the vice president’s comments as nominee and the administration of this administration have made it clear where they stand on border security — supporting the bipartisan border agreement.”

Asylum shift

In addition to expanding funding for more border barriers and hiring more federal immigration authorities, the border security bill that Harris promised to sign as president would largely bar migrants from seeking asylum if they crossed the border illegally. Many of the people Border Patrol agents encounter at the southern border are asylum-seeking migrants who claim they are fleeing conflict or persecution in their home countries.

A CNN KFile investigation into Harris’ comments from 2017 through August 2020, before Biden chose her as his running mate, found that she repeatedly promised to “honor” the asylum process put in place decades ago and criticized policies that restricted asylum seekers.

Harris was one of seven U.S. senators who signed an amicus curiae brief in late 2018 in support of a lawsuit brought by asylum seekers challenging a Trump administration rule that effectively banned all asylum claims outside border crossings.

“U.S. law is crystal clear that men, women and children arriving at any point on our borders can seek asylum,” the report said. “In our democratic system, laws should not be repealed by executive order.”

In August 2019, a judge overturned this rule and the Trump administration lost its appeals.

When Harris ran for president in 2019, he pledged to respect asylum laws and called restricting asylum a “stain on our moral conscience.”

“Under a Harris administration, we will respect issues like asylum, for example, and not try to circumvent or expedite the process for the sake of political expediency rather than for the sake of justice and fairness,” Harris said on the “Pod Save America” podcast in 2019.

She reiterated the pledge in several tweets at the time, writing in July 2019: “As President, I will immediately establish a meaningful process to review asylum cases. I will free children from cages. I will abolish private detention centers. It’s time we have a President whose actions reflect our country’s values.”

During an interview with CBS News in June 2019, she promised that a Harris administration would respect established asylum procedures, stating, “If they deserve protection, we will give it.”

A year later, in June 2020, Harris was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Congress criticizing the Covid-era Title 42 authority, which allowed the government to ban migrants from entering the country because of the public health crisis. The letter equated Trump’s asylum policy to denying safe passage to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

Shortly after Biden and Harris took office in 2021, the massive influx of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border put a significant strain on U.S. immigration resources. The Biden-Harris administration initially kept Title 42 in place. In 2022, Republicans sued to prevent the administration from ending Title 42, which it eventually did in May 2023 when it announced an end to the country’s Covid-era emergency national restrictions.

As vice president, Harris was responsible for overseeing diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration.

Despite this role, Harris’ current position on asylum is a striking departure from her previous promises to uphold the asylum process and protect vulnerable migrants.

After Senate Republicans killed the border bill at Trump’s urging, the Biden administration took executive action to restrict asylum. In June, Biden signed an executive order that largely bars migrants who cross the border illegally from seeking asylum once a daily threshold is reached, a departure from longstanding U.S. asylum policy.

While Harris has yet to publicly comment on her asylum plans, her campaign manager has indicated that Harris will continue to implement Biden’s executive orders restricting asylum.

Border wall repeatedly attacked

Throughout the Trump administration, Harris has been a consistent critic of the border wall.

In April 2018, Harris signed a letter calling on the Budget Committee to cut funding for the border wall and stop hiring new Border Patrol agents.

CNN identified one of the border walls in its new campaign ads as being built during Trump’s presidency in Sasabe, Arizona, in an area that previously had no border wall. The other walls have signs identifying them as Trump-era walls, such as so-called anti-climb barriers that were built during the Trump years.

“It’s the president’s vanity project,” Harris said in June 2019 at an event promoting her book. “Let’s just point to the facts, the evidence, the data. And the fact is, we’re not in a crisis.”

“This president rode a wave of smearing, an entire demographic,” she said at another event in 2019. “His multibillion-dollar vanity project called a wall is nothing more than a distraction from the fact that he has not actually focused on working people in America. So instead of focusing on the needs of working families in America, he creates a scapegoat, a boogeyman.”

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.