Harris camp’s new policy page criticized for lacking specifics on border security: ‘There’s no there, there’
Fox News
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign just released a new page on its website titled, “Issues,” which includes a 23-point policy platform that comes following weeks of criticism over its absence.
Pressure has been building on the Harris campaign to put up a policy platform on its website, similar to how former President Donald Trump and others have done in the past. Upon its release this week, however, the platform was met with even more criticism over a lack of specifics.
In particular, one conservative immigration hawk took issue with the policy platform’s failure to clarify Harris’ stance on border wall funding, and whether she still views illegal border crossings as a civil enforcement issue — or rather, a criminal one.
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“The Harris campaign finally has an ‘Issues’ page, but — on immigration, at least — there’s no there, there,” Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital. “She doesn’t say if she’d build more border barriers. She doesn’t say whether she still wants to decriminalize border-jumping. The statement just repeats the vacuous nonsense about the ‘bipartisan’ Senate border bill, which was drafted by the Biden-Harris DHS to codify its unlawful schemes to import more illegal aliens.”
Despite indicating a potential Harris-Walz administration would “bring back the bipartisan border security bill,” the new online policy platform did not indicate where Harris stands on funding additional border wall construction. Republicans have pointed to Harris’ public support for the failed bipartisan border bill as evidence she now backs a border wall after once calling it a “medieval vanity project.”
But Harris campaign officials have said the border bill did not include any new money for border wall construction — it just extended the timeline to spend funds appropriated during Trump’s last year as president. The bill, however, has limits to ensure the money is spent on border barriers.
“Americans should believe Harris’ prior statements and current policies as Vice President,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Fox News Digital in a statement Tuesday. “She has previously stated numerous times that she opposes a border wall. And on day one of the Biden-Harris Administration, they halted construction of the border wall system.”
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Meanwhile, while running for president in 2019, Harris indicated during a nationally televised debate that she would not go after illegal border crossings. In a segment on ABC’s “The View,” she reiterated her stance in a riff with the late-Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan.
“I would not make it a crime punishable by jail,” Harris said. “It should be a civil enforcement issue but not a criminal enforcement issue.”
“Harris repeatedly said during her CNN interview that her values have not changed,” Ries highlighted in her statement to Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the criticism from Krikorian and others about a lack of specifics in its new online policy platform, but did not receive a response.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called the new policy platform “a late-night, half-ass, wish list of policies.”
“If Kamala really wanted to lower costs and secure the border — why did she cast the tie-breaking vote to cause inflation and support the war on our energy industry, and why is she allowing an invasion of illegal immigrants through our southern border as we speak?”
Not long after the Harris campaign’s “Issues” page was added to its website, social media users pointed out that the new web page contained metadata with language urging voters to reelect President Joe Biden, according to The New Republic. The Biden language was quickly removed, but not before leaving the impression that the Harris campaign copied and pasted from Biden’s documents, the outlet reported.