Breaking: In 2019 Dem Primary Questionnaire, Kamala Harris Said ICE Must Be ‘Fundamentally Overhauled’
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On the 2024 campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris has struggled to distance herself from the record number of illegal border crossings that have occurred under the Biden-Harris administration's watch. But the left-of-center views she staked out during the 2019 Democratic presidential primary with respect to immigration policy are proving to be just as politically toxic.
A look at the 2019 presidential questionnaire from the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund — retrieved by National Review through an internet archive — underscores the lengths Harris went to appease the leftmost flank of her party on immigration policy during the 2019 primary, including calling for the fundamental “overhaul” of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a “moratorium on the construction and expansion of immigration detention centers.”
“This administration's immigration enforcement policy is cruel and out of control," Harris said of the then-president Donald Trump administration's ICE policy, responding to the progressive group’s question about whether she supported abolishing the agency. "I think that ICE needs to be fundamentally overhauled. We need to focus on public safety not separating families, and as president I will call for a top to bottom review of ICE and implement structural reforms of the agency."
"That's also why I introduced the DONE Act which would institute much-needed oversight of ICE facilities and establish a moratorium on the construction and expansion of immigration detention centers,” Harris added in her response to the group, which went on to endorse Sanders in the 2019 primary after Harris suspended her presidential campaign.
Spokesmen for Harris did not respond to National Review's request for comment about the 2019 questionnaire, which also received responses from then-candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro, and Pete Buttigieg.
Since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket this summer, Harris has sought to portray herself as a tough-on-crime ex-prosecutor, constantly talking on the stump about her experience prosecuting transnational gangs. She has responded to questions about illegal immigration on the debate stage and in interviews by reminding voters that her GOP opponent, former president Donald Trump, pressured his party to kill the bipartisan border-security deal earlier this year.
And yet Harris has struggled to bat away Republican criticisms of the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy, as well as her own prior immigration-related rhetoric and campaign pledges. In September, CNN reported Harris's answers on a 2019 American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire, where the then-presidential candidate expressed support for ending the use of ICE detainers, slashing detention by at least 50 percent, and, using taxpayer funds to subsidize gender-transition surgery for detained illegal immigrants.
The GOP ticket talks constantly about illegal immigration on the campaign trail, and Republican spending groups have spent millions of dollars tearing into Harris’s prior campaign positions on the airwaves. Many of these GOP groups have found it most effective to simply use her own words against her, including running ads that feature old interviews from Harris saying that illegal immigrations shouldn’t be treated as “criminals” and that the U.S. should "probably think about starting from scratch” when it comes to ICE.
Harris has struggled to separate herself from many of the left-of-center views she staked out on the 2019 debate stage well beyond immigration. While running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, she threatened to fine and prosecute oil companies over emissions only to tout the country's oil production while running for president in 2024. Campaign aides have also sent conflicting messages about her evolving position on fracking, and have evaded reporters' questions about whether she still stands behind her prior commitments to close private prisons, nuke the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal, end the death penalty, and decriminalize prostitution.
When it comes to border security, Republicans are feeling confident voters aren’t buying Harris’s campaign messaging. “Americans are terrified about Kamala's open border and the security weaknesses she's created as a result,” says John Ashbrook, a longtime GOP strategist. “Nobody believes she'll do anything other than make it worse in a second term, and that's why so many voters are eager to fire her on Election Day.”
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