Left-wing groups are worried Harris’s new-found appreciation for border enforcement policies that she once criticized as “un-American” will only further a “MAGA anti-immigrant agenda,” according to an Axios report. 

As she accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination last month, Harris declared support for a bipartisan border deal that stalled in the Senate earlier this year. 

“As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill,” she said. “I will sign it into law.”

The legislation was spearheaded by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and signed off on by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). It would have allocated $650 million for border wall construction, a measure which Harris previously staunchly opposed.  

Left-leaning immigration groups and liberals are hoping Harris’s new stance on the border wall is simply an election tactic to win over moderate voters who are worried about border security. 

They remain firmly opposed to the legislation she now supports.

The bill “should not be brought to the Senate floor or passed under any current or future administration,” Oxfam America’s Gina Cummings told the outlet. 

The policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project worried that the legislation would legalize “anti-immigrant policies rather than reform or modernize the sorely outdated U.S. immigration system.”

“If you take out the Ukraine aide that was originally part of the compromise, it’s just a Republican bill,” Kerri Talbot, executive director of the Immigration Hub, warned.

Other liberals called her enthusiasm for the bi-partisan legislation, which includes funding for a border wall, “harmful.” 

At one time, Harris didn’t think too highly of funding border wall construction herself. She voted against bi-partisan legislation in 2018 that would have created protections for illegal immigrants because it included funding for the wall. 

During her brief 2020 presidential run, Harris said she was “not going to vote for a wall under any circumstances.”

After calling former President Donald Trump’s border wall ambitions a “medieval vanity project” in 2019, Harris ridiculed “Trump’s border wall” as a “complete waste of taxpayer money” the following year. 

Over the course of her 2024 campaign against Trump, Harris has also changed her tune on decriminalizing border crossings.  

After she launched her bid for the White House in July, Harris declared she held the position that “unauthorized border crossings are illegal.”

“There should be consequences,” she said at the end of August. 

Her words marked a departure from a speech she gave on the Senate floor in 2017, when she said, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”

Harris issued a similar verdict in 2020 when she promised to decriminalize illegal border crossings if she won the election. 

When questioned about why her policy positions on matters, including the border, had changed during her first debate with Trump last month, Harris sidestepped the question.

“My values have not changed,” she said.

Weeks before, Harris told supporters at the Democratic National Convention, “I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border.” 

While she has remained steadfast over the years in supporting an “earned pathway to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants, Harris has offered little detail about what her immigration agenda would be should she win in November.

Even the policy page on her campaign’s website provides little detail about the vice president’s border blueprint.