Kamala, Re-Imaged | Washington DC, DC Patch

In the most remarkable turnaround in political history, Democratic Party vice president and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris has become a hard-line defender of border security, promising to hire thousands of additional border agents, crush drug cartels and lock up gun smugglers. A new ad the Harris campaign has released nationwide ends with the line: “Fixing the border is hard. So is Kamala Harris.” The spot is so blatantly dishonest, and such a brazen insult to the intelligence of voters, that it has even the most grizzled and cynical political observers stunned.

Besides the obvious fact that under her watch, millions of illegal aliens have crossed the border unchecked and disrupted the communities they settled in. Her hometowns of San Francisco, where she served as district attorney, and California, where she was attorney general and senior U.S. senator, are crime-ridden ruins. Harris’s problem is that her voting record in Congress betrays her campaign promises. She cast seven votes against bills that would have strengthened border security. And Harris’s votes on interior enforcement reflected her disdain for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency she has compared to the KKK and wants to abolish. Harris has voted 21 times for bills that would weaken interior enforcement, including legislation to end sanctuary cities. Harris also opposed the use of 287(g), the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) program to work with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify and remove detained criminal noncitizens. Some of her voices include:

* In 2017, Harris co-sponsored S. 1615, the Dream Act of 2017, which would have granted amnesty to approximately three million illegal immigrants, known as DREAMers.

* In 2017, Harris co-sponsored S. 845, the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which prohibits federal immigration agents from detaining illegal aliens in certain public places.

*In 2018, Harris voted in favor of the amendment by Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) to grant amnesty to 3.2 million illegal aliens, again the DREAMer population.

*In 2019, Harris co-sponsored S. 175, the Agricultural Worker Program Act. The legislation would grant amnesty to about 3 million farmworkers. Harris voted against an amendment from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that would have blocked federal funding for sanctuary counties. Toomey proposed reallocating funds to jurisdictions that enforce federal law and protecting local police from lawsuits for honoring ICE detainer requests. Sanctuary cities, properly defined, protect illegal alien criminals who would otherwise be prosecuted.

*As a 2020 presidential candidate, Harris pledged to grant amnesty to six million illegal aliens through executive action if necessary.

Harris is trying to re-cast herself as someone who has moved on from her extreme immigration views that are out of sync with American voters. But she hasn’t softened her advocacy for amnesty. With her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic ticket has doubled down on amnesty. In 2021, Walz wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging them to put millions of illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

But Harris cannot escape the indisputable fact that over the course of several years, she has made countless statements and cast dozens of votes opposing enforcement and supporting illegal immigration. With her tacit blessing, millions of people have entered, including ninety-nine on the terrorist watch list released domestically by the Department of Homeland Security. A House Judiciary Committee report found that at least 27 on the terrorist watch list who came through the southwest border were released by immigration judges. At least four other terrorists were granted asylum. Moreover, in the 2024 budget year, the Border Patrol encountered tens of thousands of illegal aliens from countries that could pose a risk to national security, including 2,134 Afghan nationals, 33,347 Chinese nationals, 541 Iranian nationals, 520 Syrian nationals, and 3,104 Uzbek nationals.

In evaluating Harris’ immigration position, voters should keep two more things in mind. First, she was one of four Democrats who co-sponsored the Immigration Enforcement Moratorium Act, legislation that would prevent DHS from deporting the worst criminals: murderers, child molesters and rapists. Second, don’t you dare, Harris said, wish your friends and neighbors a Merry Christmas until Congress grants DACA recipients lawful permanent residency.

Harris has been Biden’s partner in every failed policy he’s initiated. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed to reporters at a recent briefing how “aligned” Biden and Harris have been throughout the president’s tenure and how the vice president has been a “critical part” of all the president’s decision-making. Jean-Pierre: “But again, they’re aligned, you know, they’ve been aligned for the last three and a half years. There’s been no daylight.”

Biden is not on the list; he has been impeached. But Harris’s border policies are identical to those of her former boss. No one wants four more years of mass illegal immigration. In March 2021, Biden appointed Harris as his border czar, or, in his own words, he asked his vice president to lead the administration’s efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—countries that “need assistance to stem the movement of so many people, to stem the migration to our southern border.” Harris has dodged that responsibility and let illegal immigration run wild. She will try to hide from voters the devastating impact of her inaction on American communities, but that goal will be a major challenge for her candidacy.

Joe Guzzardi is an analyst at the Institute for Sound Public Policy. Contact him at [email protected]