As Vice President Kamala Harris works to secure the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party next month, her role on immigration policy is now in the spotlight.
Minutes after the President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race and was endorsing Harris, Republicans started attacking her record on immigration and border policy.
“Joe Biden has now endorsed and fully supports his ‘Borders Czar’ Kamala Harris to be the Democrat candidate for president,”Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, posted on X. “I think I will need to triple the border wall, razor wire barriers and National Guard on the border.”
Conservatives have often referred to Harris as the Biden administration’s "Border Czar," incorrectly claiming she was tasked with repairing the border.
“Kamala had one job,” said Nikki Haley earlier this month at the Republican National Convention. “One job. And that was to fix the border. Now imagine her in charge of the entire country.”
In reality, that was not Harris’ job.
She was tasked by Biden in 2021 to examine the root causes of migration from Central America, including poverty, violence, and corruption. At that time, unauthorized migration came primarily from Mexico and Central America.
She was never tapped to head immigration policy, which is the responsibility of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees all agencies in charge of the enforcement of immigration laws.
Three years later, this role could be Harris’ Achilles' heel. Her role in pushing for Biden’s immigration proposals have disenchanted Democrats and immigrant rights groups.
“I do think there is an opportunity here for Vice President Harris to have a more hopeful message around immigration than even the Biden administration has had in the past,” said Adriel Orozco, a senior policy counsel with the American Immigration Council.
Biden’s policy proposals have included severely restricting most asylum claims at the border and expediting the removal of unauthorized migrants, something immigrant rights groups have opposed.
Suyapa Portillo, a professor of Chicano/a-Latino/a Transnational Studies at Pitzer College, says Harris should try to separate herself from the Biden administration’s “slow move towards immigration reform,” and from the message of deterrence that “represents that conservatism from the Biden administration and the Democratic Party — the old guard.”
Susan Walsh
A changed immigration landscape
If Harris secures the presidential nomination, she will be facing a very different immigration landscape than back in 2021, when she was tasked with addressing its root causes.
Last year, unauthorized crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border hit an all-time high. In December 2023, the number of encounters reached nearly 250,000, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
For the last four months, the number of migrants trying to cross illegally has dramatically dropped. That’s due in part due to Mexico’s enforcement, and Biden’s policies, which include severely restricting most asylum claims at the border.
But migration has diversified in the last few years. There is an unprecedented crisis of global displacement. When Harris was elected in 2020, 90% of immigration hailed from Mexico and Central America, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
In 2023, only 49 percent of the encounters were with migrants from those four countries.
Today, immigrants arriving at the US Mexico border are fleeing from the crisis in Venezuela, the war in Ukraine and cartel violence in Ecuador, just to name a few.
A mixed track record
Harris’ record on immigration has been marred by policy blunders.
Her first international trip as vice president made clear her approach on immigration: addressing root causes to stop illegal migration.
In the summer of 2021, she traveled to Guatemala to meet with then-President Alejandro Giammattei. In a speech, she said that the Biden administration was committed to helping Guatemalans find “hope at home.”
But she also warned prospective migrants.
“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” Harris said. “Do not come. Do not come.”
Those three words: Do not come, were seen by many as a blunder. Latino advocates criticized the statement as paternalistic and tone-deaf, given the violent crises rattling the region.
For many immigrant advocates, that statement continues to haunt Harris’ candidacy.
“She needs to separate from Biden,” Portillo says. “She needs to speak to TPS holders and DACA holders for a plan for legalization, and a border plan that does not include throwing children in jail.”
But Harris has maintained that deterrence is essential: last year she announced$950 million in pledges from private companies to support Central American communities.
Judith Browne Dianis, the executive director of the D.C.-based civil rights organization Advancement Project, says Harris will now have to explain how she would tackle immigration if she were elected president.
“Is it a humanitarian response, or is there a criminalization response?” Dianis says. “We don’t need more criminalization. We don’t need a border wall. We need to get to the root causes. We need to make sure that people are taken care of.”
Criticism from GOP for not visiting the border enough
In early June 2021, Harris came under fire for not visiting the border. In an interview with NBC News, she was asked about Republican critiques.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris fired back. “I mean, I don’t understand the point that you are making.”
Her response was criticized by conservatives as disconnected and flippant towards border communities and agencies which have felt overwhelmed by the influx of migrants in recent years.
Harris’ first trip to the border came later that month, to El Paso, Texas. At a press conference there, she stated that migration “cannot be reduced to a political issue. We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we are talking about suffering.”
Earlier this year,Harris backed a Biden-endorsed bipartisan bill on border enforcement.
The measure would have added immigration detention beds, increased the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel and asylum officers, and funded technology to detect fentanyl smuggling at the Southern border. It passed in the Senate but failed to move forward after former President Donald Trump urged House Republicans to kill it.
But for many immigration advocates, Harris is their candidate.
Kerri Talbot, the executive director of the national advocacy organization Immigration Hub, called Harris a “strong defender and champion of American families, including their immigrant family members” in a statement Sunday.
“We have no doubt that she can step up to the challenge, counter Trump and JD Vance’s rhetoric and dark vision for democracy, and protect the progress we’ve made while delivering transformative change for our immigration system,” Talbot said.
Before VP, Harris was already pushing for reform
But Harris involvement with immigration goes way beyond her vice presidency, and her actions show a shift in policies.
When she was the district attorney in San Francisco, she backed a city policy that turned over to federal immigration authorities migrant juveniles suspected of committing a felony. In 2019, Harris’ campaign told CNN “this policy could have been applied more fairly.”
But as California’s attorney general, she had a different stance. In a 2015 interview withCBS Los Angeles, Harris said, “Unfortunately, I know what crime looks like. I know what a criminal looks like who's committing a crime. An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”
Harris became U.S. senator from California in 2017.
She was part of a Senate hearing on the Trump administration’s highly controversial separation policy, in which undocumented migrant children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, as a form of immigration deterrence. She questioned Trump officials, and said separating families can cause “irreparable harm.”
In 2019, she and several other Democratic senators reintroduced the Reunite Every Unaccompanied Newborn Infant, Toddler and Other Children Expeditiously (REUNITE) Act, “to expedite the reunification of separated immigrant families and promote humane alternatives for asylum-seeking immigrant families.”
When she ran for president in 2019, Harris unveiled an immigration plan that called for a path to citizenship for recipients of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, best known as DACA.
That’s similar to what the Biden-Harris campaign promised when they run in 2020. However, none of that has happened during the administration.
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