Throughout her entire political career, Kamala Harris has been at the forefront of Democrat extremism promoting open borders and sanctuary cities. But in a new ad out this week, the Harris campaign is now outrageously portraying the vice president as a champion of border security.
“As vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades,” a narrator states in the ad. “And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.”
“Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime. As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border,” the ad continues.
Another ad released late last month attempts to favorably contrast Harris’s actions on the border with those of former President Donald Trump – just as incredibly suggesting that Biden’s “border czar” somehow has a stronger record on the issue than the president who created the most secure border in decades.
The approach represents just another in a series of policy 180s for Harris, ranging from her supposed newfound support for fracking to now opposing banning private health insurance and mandating gun buybacks – both policies she supported as recently as 2020.
But Harris’s border policy flip-flop is perhaps the most egregious of all given her direct role in exacerbating the current border crisis. Moreover, her history of radicalism on immigration policy gives voters zero reason to trust her on the issue as she looks to claim the Oval Office.
Harris’s initial entry into public office was in 2003 when she was elected as San Francisco’s District Attorney. The city had officially declared itself a “sanctuary city” in 1989, and Harris fully embraced that label, telling CNN shortly after she was elected, “We are a sanctuary city, a city of refuge, and we always will be.”
Five years later, in 2008, Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, committed triple homicide in San Francisco. Ramos had an extensive juvenile record and was a known MS-13 gang affiliate. His offenses included a gang-related assault on a bus passenger and attempted robbery of a pregnant woman. However, in accordance with sanctuary city policies, Harris’s office refused to refer Ramos to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and then refused to seek the death penalty after he brutally killed three innocent people.
Despite these failures, California voters rewarded Harris by making her the state’s attorney general. As promised during her campaign, Harris made California a “sanctuary state,” actively working to undermine the efforts of federal immigration authorities to detain and deport illegal aliens, including violent criminals. Harris specifically issued guidance to local law enforcement leaders that they were not required to “determine an individual’s immigration status or to enforce federal immigration laws,” and clarified that requests from federal immigration authorities for local law enforcement to report illegal aliens were “voluntary.”
Notably, Harris’s office had little to no involvement in combating cross-border drug trafficking and human smuggling, as her ad claims. Gang members that her office did prosecute were mostly local offenders, rather than international criminal groups.
In 2015, Attorney General Harris also sent an open letter to the U.S. Senate urging them to block legislation that would ban sanctuary cities. The bill, S. 2146, the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act, would have withheld federal funding from cities that refused to comply with immigration authorities. “Criminal justice policy should not be conflated with national immigration policy,” Harris wrote, suggesting that local authorities have no legitimate role in enforcing federal law.
As a senator, presidential candidate, and now vice president, Harris has only added to her radical record. During her 2020 campaign, she explicitly called for abolishing ICE, demanded the U.S. accept more asylum-seekers from terrorist hotspots, and supported closing down every illegal alien detention center.
Then, of course, came Harris’s tenure as vice president and Biden’s point person on the border and immigration. As Harris refused to actually visit the border, viciously slandered border patrol agents, and denied that a crisis existed at all, the country shattered records for illegal border crossings and saw a flood of known terrorists, drugs, and human trafficking. The “toughest border bill in decades” that her campaign ad mentions would’ve in actuality made the problem far worse.
Now, however, in spite of twenty years of evidence to the contrary, Americans are supposed to believe that Kamala Harris cares about being “tough” on the border.
This audacious gaslighting attempt should make two things abundantly clear.
First, that Harris recognizes just how vulnerable she is on the border and illegal immigration.
Second, that Trump has clearly and undeniably won the national debate over border security, as the Democrat presidential nominee is now attempting to run to the right of him on the issue.
Both of these revelations should energize Republicans to continue hammering border security in the final months of the race. Specifically, the GOP must make clear the role that Harris and her Democrat allies have played in sowing chaos and tragedy at the border and expose the dishonest and cynical 180 they are now attempting to execute.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
