A report Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris had flip-flopped on her support for former President Donald Trump’s border wall reverberated across Washington, leaving Americans to wonder how real it is.
One conservative activist group slammed the Democratic presidential nominee for trying to steal Mr. Trump’s marquee issue. but the Trump campaign said Ms. Harris had not ditched years of opposition to the wall.
“This is a preposterous and false claim,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary.
Axios reported that Ms. Harris, who said she would sign into law a border bill pending in the Senate, has reversed her position on the wall. The bill included language to delay hundreds of millions of dollars on border wall construction until the next administration takes office in January.
The legislation also included rules on asylum claims, more money to hire border personnel and authority to expel some illegal immigrants if the flow across the border is overwhelming.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the Republicans’ chief negotiator on the legislation, told Axios that the bill “requires the Trump border wall” to be built. He said it accounted for about $650 million that Congress had earmarked for the wall from 2017 to 2020 but wasn’t spent by the Biden administration.
Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project, which focuses on stricter enforcement, said she considered the legislation “anti-wall.”
“There’s nothing in that whole bill that was pro-anything except illegal aliens,” she said.
“The Lankford bill would have provided zero new funding for the wall,” said Mark Morgan, who oversaw much of the wall construction for Mr. Trump as acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
Ms. Harris has been merciless in her criticism of the wall. She has called it “stupid,” a “terrible idea” and a “waste of taxpayer money.”
Her opposition seemed to soften in recent days. In one of her campaign ads, she repeatedly used images of a border wall constructed on Mr. Trump’s watch, promising to be “tough” on the border.
Mr. Morgan said Ms. Harris was also on board when President Biden stopped all wall construction on his first day in office, defying the recommendations of Border Patrol agents who said the wall was working.
“But now, just two months away from the election, with most Americans outraged at the chaos and lawlessness at our borders created by the Biden/Harris administration, and polls showing the border as a significant Achilles heel for her, she has the audacity to use a picture of a fully completed ‘Wall System’ to illustrate her tough on border security policy,” he said.
Indeed, according to opinion polls during the Trump administration, the wall was unpopular. Now, with Mr. Trump out of office and the border having descended into chaos, it draws stronger support.
Mr. Morgan called Ms. Harris’ use of wall images “an insult to the men and women of Border Patrol, to the American people, and the families who have had to bury their loved one after being savagely murdered by an illegal alien let into our country.”
Mr. Morgan said a more accurate image of Ms. Harris’ wall policy would be gaps in the barrier left by Mr. Biden’s pause and piles of federally funded materials rusting on the ground.
He said the $650 million in the Lankford bill would pay for maybe 15 miles of fencing. That wouldn’t include any add-ons, such as lighting and sensors, as part of Mr. Trump’s wall system.
Ms. Harris’ campaign says she supports a broad immigration compromise that could include wall construction at some strategic points, as long as it is coupled with legalizing illegal immigrants and other changes.
Her campaign says that is completely different from Mr. Trump’s vision of a wall covering hundreds of miles of the border.
The Trump administration had plans for more than 700 miles of construction and had completed more than 450 miles of new fencing when Mr. Biden took over and ordered a full halt.
Since then, Mr. Biden has been forced to restart some small wall construction projects. Congress’ language for the spending bills in 2018, 2019 and 2020 left him no choice.
The debate over Ms. Harris’ wall stance mirrors questions about a host of other policy issues on which the vice president’s stance remains murky.
She has avoided engaging directly with reporters as her campaign tries to calibrate her positions now that she is the Democratic presidential nominee.
What the vice president has been clear on is her blame of Mr. Trump for sinking the Senate bill that included the border wall language.
“Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal,” she said last week in her speech accepting the party’s nomination.
Mr. Trump did oppose the bill, but House Republican leaders had declared it “dead on arrival” well before Mr. Trump spoke out.
They said the legislation allowed too much illegal immigration and didn’t go far enough in reeling in the expansive “parole” programs that Mr. Biden has used to welcome millions of illegal immigrants into the U.S. as long as they schedule their arrivals ahead of time.
The bill failed to clear 50 votes in the Senate in two separate votes, far short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster, as some Democrats joined most Republicans in opposing it.
Among those Democrats were both of California’s senators, including Sen. Alex Padilla, who took over Ms. Harris’ seat when she was elected vice president. He said the legislation was too rough on illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and hoping to come.
Even without the legislation, illegal immigration numbers have subsided.
In July, CBP tallied 104,116 encounters with unauthorized migrants at the southern border and another 66,157 encounters at the northern border, along the coasts and coming directly into airports.
In December, CBP tallied 301,981 encounters at the southern border and 68,906 at the other entry points.
In December 2020, the last full month under Mr. Trump, CBP had fewer than 74,000 encounters at the southern border and 16,859 at the other entry points.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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