Kamala Harris’ record on immigration has been repeatedly targeted by Donald Trump‘s Republican campaign, which claims the vice president was instrumental in overseeing record numbers of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S. border in the past four years.
Harris, who has said that she would bring back the bipartisan border deal that Republicans saw an end to earlier this year, has been criticized for not doing more as vice president, in particular after being assigned the task of addressing the “root causes” of migration to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
In a recent attack ad against Harris, Donald Trump posted a bullet point list, detailing how “KAMALA INTENTIONALLY UNSECURED THE BORDER.”
Responding to a post about him from Harris, Trump shared the list on X, formerly Twitter, on August 29, which at the time of publication had been viewed 5.5 million times.
Kamala Harris speaks at the Democratic National Convention. Newsweek has fact checked Donald Trump’s latest attack ad against Harris’ record on immigration.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
However, as Newsweek’s Fact Check team discovered, several of these points were misleading.
‘HALTED CONSTRUCTION OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S BORDER WALL’
While Harris has criticized the construction of Trump’s border wall, it was President Joe Biden’s executive order in 2021 that ended its construction.
Biden proclaimed in January 2021 that “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution” and was a “waste of money.”
The administration would later build further barriers along the Rio Grande Valley, on the southern tip of Texas. The Biden administration said the money for the wall had been appropriated in 2019 before he took office, and its appropriation required that the funding be used and construction completed in 2023. Biden said he attempted to get the funding redirected, but Congress refused.
Harris’ recent commitment to reviving the bipartisan border bill would include spending millions on border wall construction.
‘TOOK MORE THAN 94 EXECUTIVE ACTIONS TO UNSECURE THE BORDER’
The “94 executive actions” appears to refer to a report from think tank the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) which claimed that in the first 100 days of office, Biden took “94 executive actions on immigration.” The report was used earlier this year by Republican representatives to criticize Biden’s immigration record.
However, how many of these actions had a direct effect if any on security at the border is arguable. One of the policies MPI mentioned was ending the long-term detention of families while another was the reinstatement of review processes for arrests, detentions, and intended removal of noncitizens. It also mentions aid relief and Harris’ appointment to oversee the root causes of migration abroad.
A spokesperson for the MPI told Newsweek that it had tallied executive actions from the Biden administration for the past three years, not just the first 100 days, as it had done for Trump over his presidency.
The spokesperson said that the executive actions “covered a wide range of areas, and thus could not be described as all focused on the border,” noting the section of the report titled “Biden’s Actions Away from the Southern Border.”
“As with the 472 executive actions taken during the Trump presidency, there have been a wide range of issue areas covered, many having nothing to do with the U.S.-Mexico border,” the spokesperson added.
‘OPPOSES ALL DEPORTATIONS’
This statement betrays Harris’ election pledge to enact the bipartisan border bill, which includes provisions to support deportations including the creation of “1,200 new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel for functions including enforcement and deportations.”
In 2021, Harris warned migrants during a joint news conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders,” Harris said.
“If you come to our border you will be turned back.”
If, as the rest of this attack ad appears to argue, the actions of the Biden administration are as much Harris’ as anyone else’s, it would stand to reason that she also supported the administration’s efforts to put family units not able to be expelled under Title 42 into expedited removal proceedings.
As stated by the Department of Homeland Security in July 2021, the procedure “accelerated” the removal of “those family units who do not have a basis under U.S. law to be in the United States.”
This claim may relate to a comment Harris made in 2019 after she was asked whether someone living in the U.S. “without documents, and that is his only offense, should that person be deported?”
Harris said: “I will say—no, absolutely not, they should not be deported. And I actually—this was one of the very few issues with which I disagreed with the administration, with whom I always had a great relationship and a great deal of respect.
“But on the secure communities issue, I was attorney general of California. I led the second-largest Department of Justice in the United States, second only to the United States Department of Justice, in a state of 40 million people.
“I disagreed with my president, because the policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE‘s own definition were non-criminals. So as attorney general, and the chief law officer of the state of California, I issued a directive to the sheriffs of my state that they did not have to comply with detainers, and instead should make decisions based on the best interests of public safety of their community.”
A Fact Check by PolitiFact found that while Harris was quoted disagreeing with the program and issuing bulletins telling law enforcement that they didn’t have to comply with the program’s federal immigration detainer requests, some experts say her early efforts to prevent cooperation were less forceful.
Newsweek has contacted media representatives for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for comment.
‘ENDED REMAIN IN MEXICO POLICY’
This was a decision made by the Biden administration to end the program known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases were processed in the U.S.
On the first day of the Biden presidency, the administration suspended the MPP and President Joe Biden issued an executive order to “promptly consider a phased strategy for the safe and orderly entry into the United States, consistent with public health and safety and capacity constraints, of those individuals who have been subjected to MPP for further processing of their asylum claims,” according to the memo.
The program was restarted under a court order in December 2021, leaving the Biden administration to take the matter up to the Supreme Court.
The higher Court ruled in favor of President Biden and his administration in June 2022 to end the policy.
While the vice president would be supportive of the president’s manifesto and administration, the implication that Harris had executive control of the policy’s cancellation is misleading.
‘SUPPORTS DEADLY SANCTUARY CITIES’
While there is no legal definition of the term, sanctuary cities have policies that “limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, such as failing to provide information about immigration status and limiting the length of immigration detainers,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
While Harris defended sanctuary city laws as San Francisco’s district attorney, she also supported policy changes by California Governor Gavin Newsom which meant undocumented juveniles arrested by police could be reported to ICE, according to CNN.
It was instituted after an undocumented man, Edwin Ramos, 21, was arrested for the murder of three members of a San Francisco family. Ramos was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without parole in 2008.
Harris still defended sanctuary law at the time, saying in a statement that it “was never intended to shield anyone from being held accountable for a crime.”
Newsweek has not found recent detailed statements from Harris on the policy.
‘FUNDED SECRET FLIGHTS FOR OVER 320K ILLEGALS INTO THE COUNTRY’
As stated by AP, Biden has exercised “parole” authority which under 1952 law allows the president to admit people “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
The White House announced the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) parole program in January 2023, allowing individuals from those four countries to apply for legal entry into the U.S. In January 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that 327,000 people from these four nations had been vetted and authorized for travel.
‘SUPPORTS MASS AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS AND WANTS TO GIVE THEM GOVERNMENT BENEFITS’
This may reference the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era policy that Harris has supported.
In June 2024, Harris released a statement supporting the actions to protect Dreamers, children who were brought to the United States without documentation.
Biden announced the expansion of health coverage to DACA recipients, who are protected from deportation, in May, saying that his administration was removing that particular barrier. The scheme is due to expand on November 1.
“As the Attorney General of California and as a United States Senator, I fought to defend and protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA),” Harris wrote in a statement.
“And as Vice President, I have worked alongside President Biden to preserve and fortify DACA, including by ensuring Dreamers have access to affordable health care, which will improve the health of all communities.
“While President Biden and I will continue fighting to protect Dreamers, only the United States Congress can ensure permanent protections for these young people and their families. Lawmakers must pass legislation that creates a path to citizenship. The time for a lasting solution is long overdue.”
DACA aimed to grant legal status to young immigrants brought here illegally by their parents.
President Barack Obama wasn’t able to push the DREAM Act through Congress, which ultimately prompted him to institute DACA via executive action in 2012 after years of activists calling for greater civil rights for undocumented immigrants.
Along with preventing deportations, DACA also provides recipients with a work permit, allows them to enroll in college and obtain valid driver’s licenses. Recipients are able to apply for a renewal after two years.
However, the claim that it is a “mass amnesty” is a stretch, as DACA included cutoff provisions for requests, as did other immigrant protection efforts supported by the administration such as the U.S. Citizenship Act, the Dream and Promise Act of 2021, and the Keeping Families Together executive action.
Newsweek has contacted a Donald Trump media representative via email for comment.
