KFile: Harris move to the center on border wall, asylum contradicts her years of progressive immigration positions

By Andrew Kaczynski, Em Steck and Daniel Medina, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris likes to portray herself as tough on the border and immigration.

Recent TV ads highlight her time as a “border state prosecutor” who aggressively targeted criminal cartels and drug smugglers, as well as her support for “the toughest border security bill in decades.”

That bill, which failed in the Senate in February and again in May, included $650 million for new border wall construction. Images of the border wall built during the Trump administration are featured in the Harris ads, yet Harris repeatedly criticized the wall over the years, describing it as an affront to both hers and America’s values.

In her 2019 book, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris called the wall “useless” and said it was “nothing more than a symbol, a monument standing in opposition to not just everything I value, but to the fundamental values upon which this country was built.”

A CNN KFile review of Harris’ social media posts found that she criticized the border wall more than 50 times during the Trump administration, calling it, among other things, “stupid,” “useless,” and a “medieval vanity project.”

As she tries to strengthen her image on the border, Harris will have to reckon with her years of opposing some of the very policies she now embraces. That includes building more border wall and also making it harder for migrants to come to the US seeking asylum.

Harris has tacked to the middle on other key issues, such as no longer banning fracking or supporting Medicare for All — positions she once supported before being picked as Joe Biden’s vice presidential nominee.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash last Thursday, Harris said, despite her policy shifts, “my values have not changed.”

Immigration and the border remain significant vulnerabilities for Harris and the Democratic party, according to some national polls, although recent polling suggests Harris has managed to narrow the gap.

Not all border work stopped during the Biden administration.

In 2021 and 2022, the administration continued work near the border wall to prevent flooding, complete prior construction of access roads and close “small gaps that remain open from prior construction activities and remediating incomplete gates.”

In October 2023, the Biden administration allowed the additional building of border wall in Texas, with Biden saying he had to use money appropriated for the wall in 2019 and could not redirect it.

“I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office at the time.

In response to questions from CNN, a Harris campaign aide said in referencing the recent campaign ad that it was “inaccurate to imply a few images” are “somehow representative of the VP’s overall policy position on a complex issue when the entirety of the ad, the VP’s remarks as the nominee, and the governance of this Administration have been clear where she stands on border security – supporting the bipartisan border agreement.”

Asylum shift

Along with extending funding for more border barriers and hiring more federal immigration authorities, the border security bill that Harris has vowed to sign as president would also largely bar migrants from seeking asylum if they crossed the border unlawfully. Many of the people who encounter Border Patrol agents at the southern border are migrants seeking asylum and claim to be fleeing conflict or persecution in their home country.

A CNN KFile review of Harris’ comments from 2017 through August 2020, before Biden picked her as his running mate, found that she repeatedly pledged to “honor the process” of asylum established decades ago and slammed policies that restricted asylum seekers.

Harris was one of seven US senators who signed onto an amicus brief in late 2018 supporting a lawsuit filed by asylum seekers challenging a Trump administration rule that effectively barred all asylum claims outside ports of entry.

“United States law is crystal clear that men, women, and children who arrive at any point on our borders may seek asylum,” read the brief. “In our democratic system, laws may not be overturned by Executive fiat.”

A judge struck down that rule in August 2019 and the Trump administration lost its appeals.

While running for president in 2019, Harris pledged to respect asylum law and called restricting asylum a “stain on our moral conscience.”

“Under a Harris administration, issues like asylum, for example, we are gonna honor the process and not try to circumvent the process and expedite the process for the sake of some political goal as opposed to the sake of justice and fairness,” Harris said on the “Pod Save America” podcast in 2019.

She reiterated the pledge in several tweets at that time, writing in July 2019, “As president, I will immediately put in place a meaningful process to review asylum cases. I will release children from cages. I will get rid of the private detention centers. It’s time we had a president whose actions reflected the values of our country.”

During a June 2019 interview with CBS News, she vowed that a Harris administration would honor established asylum procedures, stating, “If they are deserving of protection, we will give it to ‘em.”

A year later, in June 2020, Harris was one of 34 senators to sign a congressional letter criticizing the Covid-era Title 42 authority, which allowed the government to bar migrants from entering the country because of the public health crisis. The letter equated Trump’s asylum policies to the denial of safe passage to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

Shortly after Biden and Harris took office in 2021, the mass influx of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border significantly strained US immigration resources. The Biden-Harris administration initially kept Title 42 in place. In 2022, Republicans sued to keep the administration from ending Title 42, which it finally did in May 2023 when it announced the end of national Covid-era emergency restrictions.

As vice president, Harris was tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration.

Despite this role, Harris’ current stance on asylum marks a notable departure from her earlier promises to uphold the asylum process and protect vulnerable migrants.

After Senate Republicans abandoned the border bill at the behest of Trump, the Biden administration took executive actions to restrict asylum. In June, Biden signed an executive order largely barring migrants who cross the border illegally from seeking asylum once a daily threshold is reached, a departure from longstanding US asylum policy.

While Harris has yet to publicly comment on her plans for asylum, her campaign manager has signaled Harris would continue implementing Biden’s executive orders curbing asylum.

Repeatedly attacked the border wall

Throughout the Trump administration, Harris was a consistent critic of the border wall.

In April 2018, Harris signed onto a letter that urged the appropriations committee to reduce funding for the border wall and to halt hiring new Border Patrol agents.

CNN identified one of the border walls in her new campaign ads as constructed during Trump’s presidency in Sasabe, Arizona, in an area where there had not previously been border wall. The other walls feature signs that they were Trump-era walls, such as so-called anti-climbing plates that were built during the Trump years.

“It’s the president’s vanity project,” Harris said in June 2019 at an event promoting her book. “Let’s just point to the facts and the evidence and the data. And the fact is that we are not facing a crisis.”

“This president rode a wave into office of vilifying, a whole population of people,” she said at another event in 2019. “His multi-billion dollar vanity project called a wall is nothing more than a distraction from the fact that he actually hasn’t focused on working people in America. So instead of focusing on the needs of working families in America, he creates a scapegoat, a boogeyman.”

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.

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