Vice President Kamala Harris will face increased scrutiny in the months ahead after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee on Sunday — with conservative critics already zeroing in on past comments she has made about immigration and the border crisis.
Harris was thrust into the spotlight on Sunday after President Biden said he would not seek re-election in November and endorsed his vice president.
Harris’s most high-profile role on immigration came when she was tasked by President Biden in 2021 with leading the diplomatic outreach to tackle the “root causes” of migration in the Northern Triangle countries. It led to her being dubbed the “border czar” by Republicans, although the White House has rejected that description.
HARRIS NOT SPOKEN TO BORDER PATROL CHIEF DESPITE ONGOING MIGRANT CRISIS, ‘ROOT CAUSES’ PUSH
Vice President Kamala Harris has been going around the country on her Economic Opportunity Tour. (Leigh Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Harris would visit Mexico and Guatemala in 2021 as part of that assignment, and she also paid a visit to the southern border in El Paso, Texas. A project to rally private-sector investment in the region via a call to action has seen more than $5.2 billion committed since May 2021 from over 50 companies and organizations. The number of encounters from those three countries has since fallen from over 700,000 in FY 21 to over 330,000 this fiscal year so far, although it is not clear to what extent it is connected to her efforts.
However, with the crisis at the border still an ongoing issue, Republicans and conservatives have already resurfaced Harris’ broader stances on immigration outside of her role as vice president. The Republican National Committee, within an hour of Biden stepping aside, posted a clip of Harris talking in 2018 about considering abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (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,” she told MSNBC. “And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, in a memo obtained by Fox News, pointed to those remarks, as well as a previous pledge to decriminalize border crossings. It also described her as the “border czar” and pointed also to her past support of the Biden administration’s efforts to create a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The Biden-Harris campaign did not respond to questions about her record.
“Candidates should not be shy about aggressively tying their opponents to Kamala Harris’ extreme agenda,” the memo said.
Former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf tied her record to that of the Biden administration in general.
Migrants are processed by the U.S. Border Patrol near the Jacumba Hot Springs after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on June 13, 2024 in San Diego. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
“Important to remember that VP Harris has only visited the border one time in the last 3.5 years. The Biden-Harris Administration does not take this issue seriously and their policies have left the American people less secure and more vulnerable,” he said in a post on X.
FLASHBACK: KAMALA HARRIS COMPARED ICE TO KKK IN SENATE HEARING
Others pointed to a testy exchange in the November 2018 confirmation hearing of Ronald Vitiello — who was President Trump’s nominee to lead the agency — if he was “aware of the perception” of a similarity between ICE and the Ku Klux Klan.
“Are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and the discretion at ICE is being used to enforce the laws and do you see any parallels?” she asked.
Vitiello pushed back, saying “I do not see any parallels” between the immigration enforcement agency and the White supremacist group.
During her presidential campaign, Harris had also promised to “shut down all government contracts with private prisons” for ICE enforcement.
Numbers USA, a group which calls for lower levels of immigration overall, highlighted that it had given Harris an F- as a grade on her immigration voting record as a California senator.
“Kamala Harris was put in charge of the destruction of immigration enforcement. She has worked to abolish ICE since her first day in office,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. “Everything Kamala Harris has said and done in her career proves that she bows to the demands of far left, open-borders activists. The American people will have a clear choice in November — mass deportation or mass release of illegal aliens and violent criminals into American communities.”
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The scrutiny of Harris comes a week after Republicans took an aggressive stance toward immigration enforcement at the RNC, with attendees wielding placards declaring “Mass Deportation Now!”
Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.