Vice President Kamala Harris has been running a 30-second campaign ad in Arizona and Nevada, highlighting her supposedly “tough” stance on border security. The ad, which has been airing for nearly two weeks, emphasizes Harris’s record as a former California attorney general, stating, “As a border-state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border.”
The ad goes on to claim that as vice president, Harris supported “the toughest border-control bill in decades,” referring to the Biden administration’s border bill, which, despite promises to allocate $20 billion for border security, ultimately failed twice and did not include significant border enforcement measures. The ad also vows that, if elected president, Harris will “crackdown on fentanyl and human trafficking.”
Notably absent from the ad is any mention of Harris’s role as the administration’s “border czar.” During her nearly three-and-a-half-year tenure, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded over 10 million illegal-immigrant encounters nationwide, with approximately 80% of these occurring at the southern border. This omission suggests a strategic “reimagining” of her record on border security, a term Harris herself frequently uses.
Ironically, Harris’s current tough-on-border stance contrasts sharply with her position during the 2020 presidential primaries. Back then, she criticized former President Barack Obama’s immigration policies, calling his deportation of more than 3 million undocumented immigrants “wrong.” In a 2019 interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Harris stated that undocumented individuals without criminal records should not be targeted by law enforcement, emphasizing her disagreement with Obama on this issue.
As California’s attorney general, Harris further distanced herself from federal immigration policies by issuing a directive to state sheriffs, advising them not to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers, unless it aligned with the public safety interests of their communities.
Immigration remains a critical issue for voters, particularly in swing states like Arizona and Nevada. According to an April report from The Wall Street Journal, 72% of voters in key battleground states believe that America’s border security and immigration policies are “headed in the wrong direction.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley has criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of immigration, stating that their policies have allowed more than 10 million illegal immigrants to enter the country. He argues that “Americans are desperate for a president that will stop the border bloodbath triggered by Kamala’s radical policies,” and emphasized strong support for former President Trump’s promise to secure the border and initiate a large-scale deportation process on his first day in office.
This campaign ad reflects the complex and often contradictory positions Harris has taken on immigration over the years, illustrating the challenges she faces as she attempts to balance her past statements with the current political landscape.