Harris flip-flops on building the border wall
Kamala Harris has pledged to spend hundreds and millions of dollars along the southern border wall if she is elected president. She once opposed the project, which she called “un-American”, during the Trump Administration.
Why it matters: This is the latest example of Harris’ flip-flopping from her liberal past positions, such as her support for Medicare for All or banning fracking – proposals that her aides claim she now opposes.
Harris has adopted a more hawkish approach to immigration as Donald Trump’s campaign attacks her on the border with tens and millions of dollars.
She still disagrees with Trump about immigration. She opposes his plan for mass deportations and his approach to family division.
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Driving the news: In her address to the Democratic National Convention, Harris said that she would sign the recent border security bill, which Trump ordered his allies not to sign, for fear it would help Democrats win the November elections.
This bill, negotiated between senators like James Lankford(R-Okla. ) and Chris Murphy(D-Conn. ), calls for hundreds of millions in unspent funds be used to build a border wall.
Lankford said to Axios, “It is required that the Trump border wall be built.” The bill sets out the standards set by the Trump administration. Here is where the wall will be constructed. The bill specifies the construction standards, including the height and type of building.
Harris’ campaign claims that the border deal involves a lot more than just continuing funding for a wall — and is only a fraction of what Trump proposed.
Lankford’s office estimated that the legislation would cost $650 million to build a wall. This is down from the $18 Billion Trump requested in 2018.
Murphy called the bill a compromise, and it included provisions that provided more money to asylum lawyers and immigration judges in order to relieve the system’s overburden. The bill also gave the president authority to close the border if 5,000 migrants or more crossed the border per day.
Harris advisers point out that the bipartisan border plan does not include new funds to continue building the Wall.
They say that the bill only extends the deadline for spending funds that were appropriated in Trump’s final year as president. However, the new restrictions ensure the money will be spent on barriers.
Flashback: When Harris declared her candidacy for the first time in 2019, she called Trump’s wall a “medieval vanity” project that wouldn’t stop transnational gangs entering the U.S.
Harris posted on Facebook in February 2020 that Trump’s border wall was a waste of taxpayer’s money and wouldn’t make the country safer.
Harris, shortly after her election to the Senate in April 2017, said that the wall was “a stupid use of money.” I will stop any funding.”
Lankford was surprised by Harris’ embrace of border legislation this year.
He told Axios Harris was not involved in the negotiations that lasted for months: “We didn’t see any vice presidents here.” She was a Johnny come-never.
“I’m sure she’s speaking about it now but she didn’t talk about it before.”
Murphy called the bill “aggressive”, but did not emphasize the money to build the wall.
He said that in February, “We are creating bold new tools in order to gain control of the border again for the first in a very long time.” “But our bill doesn’t deviate from the core values of our nation.”
Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, slammed Trump for his demands that Republicans kill the deal. He called it pure politics. Biden stated in his State of the Union Address that Trump felt it would be a win for him and a loss for me if Republicans killed the compromise.
Some Democrats criticized Biden as well for adopting conservative and restrictive immigration policies that were included in this bill.
The bill was opposed by Sen. Alex Padilla of California. He is a Democrat and a native Californian.
Zoom in: Harris’ campaign, despite embracing a bipartisan immigration bill, has painted her in ads as a hardliner.
In one Harris TV advertisement, she describes her tenure as California’s Attorney General as “border state prosecutor” and shows images of the border fence.
In another, Harris’ team highlights her support for increasing the number of Border Patrol Agents.
The majority of Trump’s campaign ads has attacked Harris over the Biden administration’s struggles to deal with the waves of migrants who cross the border.
Bottom line: Just like the wall, Harris’s changes in border policy reflect the way Trump has changed the political debate about immigration over the last decade.
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