Vice President Kamala Harris said during her 2019 presidential campaign that “ICE needs to be fundamentally overhauled” and called the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies “cruel and out of control.”
The remarks came in response to a 2019 Democratic primary questionnaire from the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund, National Review reported. Harris also called for “much-needed oversight of ICE facilities” and “a moratorium on the construction and expansion of immigration detention centers.”
Since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July, Harris has portrayed herself as tough on illegal immigration, emphasizing her experience as an attorney general prosecuting transnational drug trafficking gangs and embracing elements of former president Donald Trump’s border security measures.
Harris pledged in late August to sign a $650 million bill to continue construction on the border wall initiated by the Trump administration. Harris once derided the project as “un-American,” Trump’s “medieval vanity project,” and “a complete waste of taxpayer money [that] won’t make us any safer.”
In 2019, Harris called for ending immigration detainers, drastically cutting ICE funding, and allocating taxpayer funds to cover gender-transition surgeries for illegal aliens, CNN reported last month.
With less than a week until the election, Harris faces ongoing criticism for her record as Biden’s border czar. Under the Biden-Harris administration, which halted the border wall construction, more than 7.8 million migrants entered the United States illegally. Over 13,000 illegal immigrants convicted of murder are at large in the United States, according to ICE data.
“Americans are terrified about Kamala’s open border and the security weaknesses she’s created as a result,” Republican strategist John Ashbrook said. “Nobody believes she’ll do anything other than make it worse in a second term, and that’s why so many voters are eager to fire her on Election Day.”
