Vice President Kamala Harris weighed in with her lukewarm backing Sunday for the new bipartisan border deal, saying she thinks it will give the administration “additional solutions.”
Ms. Harris, whom President Biden tapped as a border czar back in 2021, has been decidedly absent from the negotiations, but she issued a statement praising Congress for stepping in to deliver.
“This agreement on border security and immigration does not include everything we have fought for over the past three years — and we will continue to fight for these priorities – but it shows: we can make the border more secure while preserving legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation,” she said.
The deal, at least symbolically, is a major rebuke to the Biden team, reviving a number of Trump-era get-tough ideas, albeit with more loopholes and carveouts.
It would create a Title 42-style expulsion authority that kicks in when Homeland Security detects an average of 5,000 migrants a day, not including unaccompanied children or migrants who evade capture.
Th bill would also expand deportation resources and tighten asylum rules, although it would put key asylum decisions in the hands of more lenient officers.
It also includes an expansion of legal immigration, grants immediate work permits to catch-and-release migrants, and authorizes government-funded lawyers for illegal immigrant children.
“Let us remember: we are a nation of immigrants. Immigrants have always helped strengthen our country, grow our economy, and drive innovation. We know that in America, diversity is our strength. So rather than politicize this issue, let us all address it with the urgency and seriousness it requires,” Ms. Harris said in her statement.
Mr. Biden asked her to take on border matters in early 2021, just as the border was beginning to spiral out of control.
She would make one high-profile visit to the border in summer 2021, but has avoided it since. She said her charge from Mr. Biden wasn’t actually to solve the border, but rather to work on conditions in Central America and elsewhere in the hemisphere that spur migration north.
To that end, she said she’s overseen a major surge of investments.
Before ascending to the vice presidency Ms. Harris was a senator, where she was vicious in her criticism of Homeland Security, including comparing the department’s deportation force to the Ku Klux Klan.
The new legislation she’s now backing would expand that deportation force.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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