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Vice President Kamala Harris has updated her stance on several key immigration and border security policies, moving away from her previous positions. The Harris campaign confirmed to Fox News that the Vice President’s revised views include changes on issues such as the decriminalization of illegal crossings and the closure of immigration detention centers.
In a statement, Harris’s spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg highlighted the Vice President’s shift as part of a broader, pragmatic approach to leadership. “While Donald Trump is wedded to the extreme ideas in his Project 2025 agenda, Vice President Harris believes real leadership means bringing all sides together to build consensus,” Ehrenberg said. “It is that approach that made it possible for the Biden-Harris administration to achieve bipartisan breakthroughs on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention.”
Harris, who faced criticism for her immigration policies during her tenure as a California senator and her 2020 presidential campaign, has adjusted her stance after three years in the Biden administration. Previously, Harris advocated for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, suggesting they should be treated as a civil rather than a criminal offense. In a 2017 statement, she declared, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”
However, the campaign now asserts that Harris’s position aligns with the current administration’s stance: unauthorized border crossings are illegal. This shift reflects a broader alignment with the administration’s policies.
Additionally, Harris had previously promised to close immigration detention centers if elected president. On Thursday, the campaign stated that her position now mirrors the administration’s approach, focusing on resource allocation to enforce laws and prioritize detention for individuals who pose security threats.
Harris has also supported a bipartisan Senate package aimed at increasing border security funding and limiting asylum entries. President Biden signed an executive order in June that curtailed asylum applications and led to a notable decrease in border crossings, which the administration attributes to the order’s effectiveness.
The Trump team has attacked Harris’s revised stances, claiming that although she is making an effort to temper her opinions, her earlier remarks still reflect her “dangerously liberal” viewpoints. Kevin Munoz, the spokesman for the Trump campaign, questioned Harris’s veracity while highlighting Trump’s critiques of the way the administration is managing border security.
“The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border is ripping mothers from their children and a few xenophobic placards at the Republican National Convention,” Munoz said, accusing Trump of failing to address border security adequately. Despite Trump’s accusations that Harris has contradictory stances, he compared this to Harris’s dedication to finding bipartisan solutions.