‘Border czar’ Kamala Harris evolves on immigration to build case against Trump

Kamala Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket has energized the Democratic base and refocused Republican attack lines. With less than 100 days to go until the election, defining Kamala Harris will take place at lightning speed. This Washington Examiner series will take a closer look at various aspects of her campaign and persona. Part four is on Kamala the “border czar.” Read parts one, two, and three.

“Border czar” or not, Kamala Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket has brought with it intense scrutiny on her role in the country’s illegal immigration crisis.

Republicans have been quick to remind the public of the term and have been at pains to tie the vice president directly to the issues that have unfolded at the border in the past 3 1/2 years.

Democrats have pushed back on the use of the term and instead pointed to her focus on illegal immigrants already in the country, which may hint at the direction a Harris administration may go in should she beat former President Donald Trump in November.

“Her focus has been on immigration in the interior. She’s done a lot more about trying to create access to services for immigrants in the U.S. She’s talked a lot about healthcare as well for immigrants and integration efforts,” Migration Policy Institute senior policy analyst Ariel G. Ruiz Soto told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview.

PART ONE: KAMALA THE COP
PART TWO: KAMALA THE ABORTION ADVOCATE
PART THREE: KAMALA THE LIBERAL

Harris is moving quickly to blot out Republican presidential nominee Trump as the “border” candidate in the race.

Her campaign released its first campaign ad Tuesday that dogged Trump over border security.

In a campaign rally in Atlanta on Tuesday evening, Harris again slammed Trump for how she said he had influenced congressional Republicans since he left office.

“He tanked — tanked — the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election,” Harris said. “Donald Trump does not care about border security. He only cares about himself.”

Border czar or not?

President Joe Biden’s decision in mid-July not to run for a second term immediately put all eyes on Harris.

Republicans jumped out of the gate last week and have continued this week with fresh criticism of her role as White House “border czar.”

“Joe Biden has now endorsed and fully supports his ‘Borders Czar’ Kamala Harris to be the Democrat candidate for president,” Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said in a post to X. “I think I will need to triple the border wall, razor wire barriers and National Guard on the border.”

In the U.S. House, Republicans and six Democrats voted in support of a resolution condemning Harris’s role as “border czar,” a move that infuriated some Democrats who noted that she was not technically ever given that title or responsibility.

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign debuted its first ad campaign that targeted Harris specifically for her work on the border crisis.

Democrats and the media have been at pains to push back on the “border czar” messaging, insisting she was never appointed to such a role.

“Vice President Harris was NEVER appointed Border Czar’. There has never been such a position. It doesn’t exist,” the Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a statement Monday. “Vice President Harris was NOT asked to lead on the Administration’s immigration or border enforcement policies.”

Biden tapped Harris early on to address the root causes of citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico fleeing to the United States.

Ruiz Soto said the decrease in illegal immigration from some of those countries was not necessarily due to Harris’s work and that immigrants from all around the globe had surged to the southern border to more than make up for any decline.

Harris has also raised more than $5 billion in private investments to the region, according to the White House, but that will not have an overnight impact on improving the economy or availability of jobs, which have prompted many immigrants in the region to flee for economic reasons.

The ambiguity surrounding her role could in part be explained by her failure to prioritize the border compared to immigration within the country’s borders.

“Kamala Harris’s border duties have never been clearly defined. Since March 2021, however, she’s done everything possible to distance herself from the administration’s migrant disaster at the Southwest border, especially now that she is the presumptive nominee. And, honestly, who can blame her?” Andrew Arthur, a former federal immigration judge who is now resident fellow in law and policy at Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, wrote in a July 25 blog post.

Advancing immigrants rights and freedoms

Harris championed illegal immigrants who were essential workers during the pandemic and has continued to do so throughout her time as vice president, according to Ruiz Soto.

“She’s done a lot to work with states to try to figure out how to get them to integrate immigrants better, not just states like California where she certainly has a lot of history, but also states in the interior,” Ruiz Soto said. “Harris was very much involved in trying to make sure that immigrants would have access to services … [and] all the different programs for subsidies that were being given, she certainly pushed and applied a lot of the separate efforts in California and New York, and I believe in others play other places where immigrants, even if they didn’t have status and would have at least some assistance or some fallback they could take.”

More recently, Harris has focused on the role that immigrants can play in their communities, including the crucial role immigrant workers play in the economy.

“It was really big earlier on this year when there was a lot of talk about inflation in the U.S. and if immigrants took jobs or not from the native populations,” Ruiz Soto said. “She and others in the administration, I believe, had a small tour of the U.S., where they actually talked about the significance of immigrants, jobs to the country.”

Decriminalizing illegal crossings at border

Harris has previously made clear that she does not support existing immigration laws at the border. Migrants who illegally cross the border are arrested by federal Border Patrol agents and face federal misdemeanor charges for unlawful entry. A second offense is a federal felony.

As the attorney general of California in 2015, Harris declared that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”

“I’m a career prosecutor. I’ve personally prosecuted everything from low-level offenses to homicides,” Harris told CBSLA. “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 said again in 2019 during an appearance on ABC show The View, that she was “in favor of saying that we are not going to treat people who are undocumented and cross the border as criminals.”

“I would not make it a crime punishable by jail. It should be a civil enforcement issue but not a criminal enforcement issue,” Harris said. “We can’t treat people like criminals.”

Abolish ICE, start over ‘from scratch’

In 2018, then-President Trump allowed federal law enforcement for a short time to separate children and parents who crossed the border as families in order to prosecute adults for illegal entry. Children cannot be detained more than 20 days nor was it appropriate to hold children in jail-like settings for weeks.

The GOP White House’s action fueled progressive Democrats like Harris to call for the abolishment of federal agency U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for its role in detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) noted in a floor speech Monday that Harris was at the forefront of that unsuccessful movement to shutter ICE.

“Back in 2018, then-Senator Harris was asked if she supported the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement. You may recall, this is back when our colleagues on the left, the Democratic Party, supported ‘Defund the Police,’” Cornyn said. “She went even farther and said we ought to abolish ICE.”

Harris told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt in 2018 that “there’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing.”

“And we need to probably think about starting from scratch,” Harris said.

In a November 2018 congressional hearing, then-Sen. Harris suggested that ICE was perceived in a similar way to the Ku Klux Klan during a confirmation hearing of Ronald Vitiello, the nominee to head the agency.