OPINION:
Vice President Kamala Harris’ biggest electoral vulnerability is the unprecedented border crisis that has happened on her watch. And she knows it. That’s why her campaign is plowing tens of millions of dollars into ads that redefine Ms. Harris as tough on illegal immigration.
It’s smart politics, but voters shouldn’t fall for it. At every stage of her political career, Ms. Harris has worked to undermine border security and increase immigration. Her own recent statements make it clear she’d continue that pattern in the Oval Office.
Start with her time as San Francisco district attorney. Her office selected an illegal immigrant for a “Back on Track” program that allowed convicted criminals to avoid prison and complete work training instead — even though such immigrants aren’t eligible to work in this country legally. The migrant, who was already a felon after pleading guilty to selling cocaine, eventually assaulted a woman while in the program.
Ms. Harris displayed her full radicalism on immigration policy in the Senate. In her only term, she supported measures to block border wall funding, offer taxpayer-funded legal counsel to migrants, create more foreign worker slots, award amnesty to illegal immigrants, stymie asylum reform and ban local law enforcement agencies from working with federal officials to detain and deport people here illegally.
She also introduced legislation to prevent the government from detaining or removing illegal immigrants who petitioned to sponsor unaccompanied minors. She asserted that arresting wannabe sponsors was “outrageous” because it would leave children with “nowhere to go.”
But Ms. Harris’ bill was the real outrage. It would have empowered illegal immigrant criminals to smuggle minors across the border into forced labor, sex trafficking or gangs. Nevertheless, the vice president now insists that she has always targeted “international drug gangs, human traffickers, and cartels that smuggled guns, drugs, and human beings.”
And of course, the vice president bears direct responsibility for the worst border crisis in American history. In March 2021, President Biden tasked her with leading the effort to stem illegal migration at our southern border and “stop what’s happening.”
Her results? Since she and Mr. Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 150,000 encounters with illegal immigrants at the southern border in all but five months, with an all-time high of nearly 302,000 last December. Monthly border encounters total more than 7.2 million in under four years.
That number would be even higher without the administration’s counting gimmicks.
Since January 2023, federal officials have been “paroling” inadmissible migrants who book appointments through the government’s recently created CBPOne app. So far, more than 530,000 migrants have arrived, often on flights directly into the interior United States. They aren’t included in the border encounter totals.
More than 2 million known “gotaways” have also evaded the Border Patrol and entered the United States illegally under Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, according to a September report from the House Committee on Homeland Security. That’s nearly twice the number of gotaways as in the entire previous decade.
Some of them were surely terrorists. the Border Patrol has apprehended more than 380 migrants on the terror watch list during this administration — up from just 14 during the Trump administration. Our border agents are talented, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely that no terrorists have slipped through, given the massive increase in attempts.
If elected president, Ms. Harris would make the border crisis even worse. She recently pledged to create a “pathway to citizenship” for millions of illegal immigrants — a promise that would entice millions more people around the world to come here illegally in hopes of receiving that amnesty or a future one.
The vice president also wants to revive the Senate immigration bill that would require law enforcement to process and release a minimum of 500,000 illegal immigrants into the interior each year. It would also award instant work permits to asylum-seekers and increase legal immigration.
The bill didn’t make it far in Congress. House leaders declared it dead on arrival, and the Senate rejected it, with four Democrats and nearly all Republicans opposing it.
Nevertheless, Ms. Harris keeps touting her support for that “bipartisan” bill — which attracted the support of a single Senate Republican — as evidence that she favors “tough, smart solutions to secure the border [and] keep communities safe.”
It’s a ridiculous claim. In a few days, we’ll see whether voters buy it.
• Eric Ruark is director of research and sustainability at NumbersUSA.
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