Kamala Harris: Open Borders Radical
Kamala Harris has advocated open borders her entire career. She excoriated Americans who sought to limit migration, chanted “down with deportation,” and backed free health care, housing, college education, and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
But since being anointed in July as the Democratic nominee for president, Harris has reimagined her position on illegal immigration. The mainstream media has scrubbed her record, mischaracterizing, omitting, implausibly distinguishing, or simply ignoring much of what she said and did from her time as San Francisco District Attorney to the day before Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. It bears repeating that Democrats—especially Harris and Walz—wouldn’t lie if voters preferred their policies.
Concurrently, Democrats and the media have massively gaslighted voters about Donald Trump’s record on immigration in an infelicitous attempt to blame him for the Biden-Harris Administration’s failures. But Americans aren’t buying it. In a Fox poll last month, 71% blamed the border crisis on the administration’s failure to enforce the law. Trump’s polling advantage on immigration ranges from 10% to 14%.
Harris is now telling voters that she will control immigration because, overwhelmingly, that is what most voters want. According to a Monmouth University poll, 84% of Americans, including most Democrats, see illegal immigration as a serious problem, and most favor a border wall. More than 60% of registered voters, including a majority of Hispanics, favor the deportation of illegal aliens.
That is not, however, what radical Left globalists want. For them, the Biden-Harris Administration spectacularly succeeded by intentionally pursuing a policy of opening the Southern border and relocating illegal migrants across the country.
The Democrats’ open border policies are part of their tripartite plan to achieve a permanent Democratic majority. The other elements are admitting Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, thereby adding at least four Democratic senators and up to five Democratic congressmen, and controlling the appellate jurisdiction of—and packing—the Supreme Court to neutralize conservative justices.
Democrats expect most illegal immigrants will vote for them, whether now in jurisdictions that permit noncitizen voting or eventually when they receive citizenship. According to the New York Times, more than a dozen cities and towns already allow noncitizens to vote.
Emphasizing the Democrats’ duplicity, on Friday the Justice Department sued Virginia to prevent the Commonwealth from removing noncitizens from its voter roles ahead of the election. A DOJ press release claimed the department was preventing “a systematic state program aimed at removing voters from its election rolls too close to the Nov. 5 general election.” Madness!
In 2013, the Center for American Progress mistakenly spoke the truth when it analyzed the shifting demographics of immigration, writing that “Getting right on immigration and getting behind real and enduring immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in our country is the only way to maintain [progressives’] electoral strength in the future.” This summer, just five of 203 Democrats in the U.S. House supported the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Can’t Hide the Truth
Kamala Harris’s record as an immigration radical is extensive.
In 2012, then-California Attorney General Harris opposed the Obama Administration by backing an illegal immigrant’s right to obtain a license to practice law in California. In 2014, she issued a bulletin to California police and sheriff’s departments, warning them that compliance with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer requests could subject them to liability under state law.
When she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, Harris said she would do everything she could to protect illegal immigrants from deportation and called the border wall “absolutely unrealistic.” The Los Angeles Times reported that Harris struck a “defiant tone” during her first public appearance after winning by holding an event with immigrant rights activists at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. Her first speech in the Senate condemned the Trump Administration’s restrictions on illegal immigration. Video recently surfaced of then-Senator Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, joining with protestors in January 2018, including disgraced actor Jussie Smollett, to chant, “Down, down with deportation!”
In 2018, Harris signed a letter calling on the Senate Appropriations Committee to reject President Trump’s FY 2019 funding request for a “costly and ineffective border wall, new Border Patrol agents, and a large increase in [ICE] personnel and detention beds.” During a confirmation hearing for Ronald Vitiello, Trump’s nominee to lead ICE, Harris demanded that he concede he was aware of the “perception” of parallels between ICE and the Klu Klux Klan. In June 2018, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Harris said it was time to “reexamine” ICE and “probably think about starting from scratch.”
When running for president in 2019, Harris promised to decriminalize border crossings and provide publicly-funded health care for illegal immigrants, including government-funded gender reassignment surgery for illegal alien criminals. She supported “considering” giving felons the right to vote, objected to President Obama’s use of the Secure Communities program to partner with local authorities to deport illegal aliens, called deportations “deeply reprehensible,” and said it was “deeply troubling” that the Trump Administration opposed federal district courts issuing nationwide injunctions to block its immigration policies.
The same year Harris was elected to the Senate, Donald Trump was elected president. A Migration Policy Institute February 2022 report described the Trump Administration’s success in curtailing illegal immigration:
Over the course of four years, the Trump administration set an unprecedented pace for executive action on immigration, enacting 472 administrative changes that dismantled and reconstructed many elements of the U.S. immigration system. Humanitarian protections were severely diminished. The U.S.-Mexico border became more closed off.
MPI’s report observes that FY 2019 included the highest number of migrant apprehensions at the Southern border since FY 2007. Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instituted policies that significantly limited asylum, while “successfully pressuring Mexico to increase its own immigration enforcement.” Trump also launched “Remain in Mexico” which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for a resolution of their case.
MPI observed that the Trump Administration implemented some of the “most restrictive border policies in U.S. history.” Border detentions rose from 400,000 under Obama to more than 800,000, but deportations fell during the same period from 1,160,000 to 935,000. The Trump Administration also increased the pace of adjudications and reduced refugee admissions by 85%.
What Crisis?
On its first day in office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration stopped work on the border wall and suspended Remain in Mexico. Over the next few weeks, Biden signed executive orders to dismantle Trump’s immigration policies, including his zero tolerance policy on prosecuting illegal border crossings and requiring that visa applicants have health insurance. In June 2021, Biden and Harris permanently ended Remain in Mexico, effectively freeing millions of illegal aliens and repudiating Americans who overwhelmingly support the policy.
In September 2021, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo that essentially exempted most illegal immigrants from deportation proceedings unless they tried to enter the United States illegally after November 1, 2020. The administration granted parole status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants each year. By contrast, Trump and Obama issued parole in only a few dozen cases each year. The administration also expanded the use of “temporary protected status” (TPS)—the status claimed by the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. A Congressional Research Service report last month estimates that 865,000 people currently hold TPS status.
The Biden-Harris Administration also boosted refugee admissions, increased exemptions for children, ceased enforcement of the public charge rule that denies green cards to immigrants who might use public benefits like Medicaid, and sent a proposed immigration bill to Congress that further lifted restrictions on immigration and established a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens.
On March 24, 2021, President Biden selected Vice President Harris to lead efforts “stemming the movement of so many folks, [and] stemming the migration to our southern border.” He said that Harris would work on the diplomatic front and also “enhance” migration enforcement. Then, he added:
So it’s not her full responsibility and job, but she’s leading the effort because I think the best thing to do is to put someone who, when he or she speaks, they don’t have to wonder about is that where the President is. When she speaks, she speaks for me. Doesn’t have to check with me. She knows what she’s doing, and I hope we can move this along.
But—so, Madam Vice President, thank you. I gave you a tough job, and you’re smiling, but there’s no one better capable of trying to organize this for us.
As even the liberal media acknowledged, there was a crisis on the Southern border, and in July 2021, Harris announced what the media termed a “sweeping strategy” to address the root causes of migration in Central America. Her plan, most of which was never implemented, called for hundreds of millions of dollars of aid, prosecuting corruption, and private sector support. There was nothing about stopping caravans, coyotes, sex trafficking, fentanyl distribution, adjudicating asylum requests before admitting illegal immigrants, or returning illegal immigrants to their points of origin.
Concurrently, the White House issued a Collaborative Migration Management Strategy. Like Harris’s announcement, the strategy did not seek to reduce illegal immigration. Instead, it laid out a plan to manage “safe, orderly, and humane migration in North and Central America,” including “expand[ing] access to lawful pathways for protection and opportunities to the United States.”
In September 2022, Harris told NBC’s Chuck Todd that “the border is secure” and that the Trump Administration was responsible for a “broken” immigration system.
To implement its plan to resettle illegal aliens throughout the country, the Biden-Harris Administration began night-time flights. In 2023 alone, 320,000 illegal aliens were transported to 43 airports. The administration also provided hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens free cell phones, and under ICE’s “alternative to detention” program, subsidies for housing. In May 2023, the administration allowed Title 42 authority to lapse, replacing it with a system that permitted at least 2,500 illegal immigrants to enter the country each day, nearly one million each year.
The numbers are unambiguous. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, border encounters with illegal aliens during the Trump Administration totaled about 3,000,000, while to date, encounters during the Biden-Harris Administration total about 10.7 million—approximately a 400% increase. Many believe the actual number of “gotaways” is much higher.
The problem is much worse than too many unvetted migrants overwhelming our capabilities. In March of this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned a Senate committee that “we are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border.” In its 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment, the DHS alerted Americans that the threat environment in the U.S. will “remain high,” with migrants with “terrorism ties” contributing to the elevated risk level. And over the summer, the DHS Inspector General issued a report warning that ICE has lost track of 323,000 unaccompanied children who have no lawful immigration status.
The DHS Inspector General issued another report two weeks ago that acknowledges all a “noncitizen” has to do to be released into the U.S. is “express a fear of persecution in their home country.” Further, the report observed that immigration officers can also parole noncitizens into the United States temporarily for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” If the noncitizens do not have identification, “immigration officers accept noncitizens’ self-reported biographical information.”
Triangulation, Harris-Style
In October 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration read the polls and focus groups, and finally realized that it had to at least appear to be doing something about our open borders, or Democrats would lose the 2024 presidential election and the Senate. The administration started to take minimal steps to bring down illegal immigration, and encounters declined in 2024.
First, the administration reversed itself, and sought waivers of environmental regulations to allow construction of 20 miles of border wall in Texas. Then it finally issued an executive order to reduce asylum claims, but not before pretending it could not act without Congress.
In late 2023 and early 2024, a small bipartisan group of senators developed an immigration bill. On February 7, 2024, the Senate Border Act of 2024 was defeated by a vote of 50 (including five Democrats) to 49 (including four Republicans). The bill was a chimera. Instead of controlling immigration, it provided a mechanism for the administration to grant de facto legal status, including work permits, to even more migrants. It allowed nearly two million illegal aliens to enter the U.S. each year before the border would be partially closed. During the partial closure, the government would still be mandated to process a minimum of 1,400 illegal migrants a day, as well as children and other classifications. Like the Harris and Biden immigration plans, the proposed law authorized hiring more border patrol agents to process illegal migrants, not keep them out. According to the Monmouth University poll, about 60% of Americans aware of the bill opposed it.
Though the bill’s defeat was bipartisan, the Biden-Harris Administration has dishonestly blamed its failure on Republicans—and in particular Trump. As Harris put it during her acceptance speech at the DNC: “Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.” The truth is that the Biden-Harris Administration intentionally opened the borders and ended most deportations. Then they pretended that they required congressional action to take action they had no intention of taking. On February 11, 2024, Secretary Mayorkas told NBC’s Meet the Press that the administration accepted no responsibility for the situation at the border.
Confronting a favorability rating under 40%, and polls showing immigration as Americans’ top issue, in June 2024 the administration announced that, subject to numerous exceptions, it was restricting asylum at the Southern border until the number of apprehensions fell below 1,500 per day for a week. It would resume restrictions if the number of apprehensions exceeded 2,500 per day for a week. Just two weeks later, without authority to do so, the Biden-Harris Administration created a new exception and announced a mass amnesty for up to about 1,000,000 illegal aliens married to U.S. citizens. In August, a federal district court blocked the program in response to a lawsuit filed by Texas and 15 other states.
On September 25, 2024, ICE revealed that as of July, there were more than 662,000 illegal immigrants roaming freely in the United States, consisting of 435,719 convicted criminals (13,000 murderers, more than 15,000 convicted for sexual assault, 62,000 for other assaults, and 2,500 for kidnapping) and 226,847 facing pending criminal charges.
Two days later, for only the second time since she was elected vice president, Harris visited the Southern border for a photo-op that took less than 30 minutes. She then made a campaign appearance during which she disingenuously promised to crack down on illegal border crossers by rapidly deporting them and barring their reentry for five years. She threatened that repeat crossers would face criminal penalties and again blamed the Biden-Harris Administration’s failure to control illegal immigration on Trump.
Three days later—just 36 days before election day—the Biden-Harris Administration modified its June asylum restrictions to extend the period during which apprehensions must fall below 1,500 per day to 28 days before restrictions are lifted. Then, adding to the Harris disinformation campaign, just 31 days before the election, the DHS announced that temporary parole for 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who entered the U.S. by air since October 2022 will not be extended. The DHS website noted, however, “There are a full range of existing lawful immigration pathways, including an extension of parole, immigrant and nonimmigrant visas, asylum, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS), that certain parolees may be eligible for in accordance with U.S. laws.” If Harris wins, the administration also could immediately reverse its decision.
In November 2023, when there were more than a million fewer illegal crossings than today, the House Committee on Homeland Security reported that the annual cost to care for and house known gotaways and illegal aliens, among other burdens on the U.S. economy, could exceed $500 billion each year. Last week, Secretary Mayorkas warned that FEMA will soon be out of money to help hurricane victims, though it spent nearly $1.5 billion to aid illegal aliens since Biden and Harris took office.
Kamala Harris has long sought open borders. The Biden-Harris Administration made good on that promise for three years, somewhat pulling back to win the opportunity to resume its depravity for another four years. The administration has repeatedly lied about its actions, and Harris is lying about her sudden conversion to a border moderate.
Anyone who believes that Harris has undergone a miraculous conversion empowers the Democrats to reopen the borders after November 5. As Harris told CNN, her “values” have not changed.
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