Vice President Kamala Harris is currently running as a tough-on-the-border candidate, but she once pledged to close all migrant detention centers on “day one.”
A resurfaced video of Harris from a 2019 town hall, when she was running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, showed her answering in the affirmative when asked by an attendee if she would work to close migrant detention centers. The answer coincides with other anti-border enforcement commentary she made as a 2020 candidate and as a U.S. senator from California. (RELATED: Dems Strolling Into Chicago For Convention Could End Up Getting A Taste Of The Border Crisis)
“I’m a volunteer with the Center for Worker Justice,” the attendee said in the video. “I want to know, when you become president, would you be committing to close the immigration detention centers?”
“Absolutely, on day one. On day one,” Harris responded.
It’s not immediately clear if Harris still supports closing migrant detention centers. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Harris’ campaign has released at least two different advertisements that claim she would “fix the border” as president and crack down on illegal immigration by increasing the number of Border Patrol agents.
A campaign ad released in July claimed Harris supports increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, supports new technology to block drugs from entering the country and faulted former President Donald Trump for not backing the failed Senate border deal. Another advertisement framed her as a tough border-state prosecutor and reiterated her pledge to hire “thousands more” border agents.
The former California senator was among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who raised their hands when asked if they supported the decriminalization of illegal border crossings. Also as a senator, she once compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Ku Klux Klan members during a confirmation hearing and formally opposed then-President Trump’s efforts to secure funding for more Border Patrol agents.
NumbersUSA, an organization that advocates for more hawkish border policies, awarded Harris’ Senate career an F- for her support of legislation that, the organization argues, would incentivize more illegal immigration and weaken border security.
Closing migrant detention centers would likely only worsen the border crisis, according to career enforcement professionals. Border Patrol agents have testified that closing detention centers incentivizes more illegal immigration as a lack of detention space allows them to immediately enter the country.
