What is Kamala Harris’ record on immigration? She has a willingness to adapt, advocates say

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Tackling immigration issues will be a huge challenge for Vice President Kamala Harris as Republicans blast away at her record — and her shifting views.

Harris, now the favorite to run as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, once supported a 2008 policy that turned over undocumented minors to federal immigration authorities.

More recently, she’s been criticized by both Republicans and Democrats. The GOP routinely mocks her as the Biden administration’s “border czar” for her role in a Biden administration Central American migration assignment, while Democrats criticized her for what they deemed were remarks discouraging asylum seekers.

The border remains one of the top issues for voters, said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican and veteran Latino trends voting expert. Republicans will work quickly to attack her on the issue, particularly by tying her to President Joe Biden and bringing up her past.

“What they can start doing is just hammering her on the issue and making her look weak and all over the place on the issue,” Madrid said. “That’s the objective.”

But immigrant rights advocates have rallied around Harris in the days following Biden’s decision to not seek re-election.

They’ve lauded Harris as a champion of the immigrant community, citing her years as a California U.S. senator and the state’s attorney general.

Neither the vice president’s office nor the campaign responded to requests for comment on this story.

Harris’ changing views on the issue illustrate her willingness to adapt with the times and listen to plights of immigrants, according to advocates. They argue Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants, has a nearly 10-year record of proving herself to them.

“As she became much more connected to the stories of immigrant youth, the stories of immigrant families, she changed her mind about these issues,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Los Angeles-based organization Coalition For Humane Immigrant Rights.

The Biden administration has more recently moved politically to the right on the border, said Adriel D. Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Counsel, which advocates for immigrant rights. For Harris, she could revert to “more of a hopeful tone” on pathways to citizenship that she had as a U.S. senator, Orozco said.

Madrid said Harris’ shift is understandable given that the “immigration debate has fundamentally changed” for both parties.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Madrid said. “But politically, that means that your opponents can pick and choose where they want to hit you from — the left, the right or both.”

Her past immigration stances

In 2003, Harris was the first person of color elected district attorney of San Francisco.

Early into her first term, she established herself as a vocal leader for immigrants. Harris criticized “anti-immigrant” federal legislation and supported providing visas to undocumented victims of violent crimes.

But in 2008, while in her second term, Harris sided with then-Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposed policy to report juvenile undocumented immigrants to federal authorities, regardless of whether they had been found guilty in court of any crime.

For about two decades before this, San Francisco had been a “sanctuary city,” or one that limits cooperation with the federal government in enforcing immigration law, offering protections from deportation to undocumented residents. San Francisco, which remains a sanctuary city today, changed policy in 1992 to remove protections for criminal adult suspects, but not juvenile ones.

Harris’ district attorney office continued to support San Francisco as a sanctuary city during that time.

The 2008 policy followed a highly scrutinized criminal case in which an undocumented 21-year-old man was arrested for murdering three members of a family.

A statement from Harris at the time said the sanctuary city law “was never intended to shield anyone from being held accountable for a crime.”

Her stance on Newsom’s policy faced backlash from activists and members of San Francisco’s elected Board of Supervisors, who opposed the rule.

Former board member David Campos, now the vice chair of the California Democratic Party, recently pledged his support to Harris. But in 2008, he was one of the leading figures opposing Harris and Newsom.

“I felt that she was on the wrong side of that issue,” Campos said.

Campos argued then that undocumented juvenile immigrants should be granted due process before reporting them to federal immigration authorities.

Newsom’s policy to report juvenile undocumented immigrants ultimately took effect and, within one year, more than 100 juvenile suspects were reported to federal custody for deportation, according to the New York Times.

Legislation later introduced by Campos reverted the city back to its old policy of only reporting undocumented minors after a felony conviction.

“At the time, the political climate, and the situation was such where there was a need to push for that by some,” Campos said. “But as time has progressed, we have come to better appreciate, certainly as Democrats, the importance of due process.”

Despite their differences during that time, Campos said he is fully backing Harris and believes she has since shown a better understanding of the immigration issue.

He and Salas said Harris’ formative experience on immigration came as California’s attorney general in 2010, and only continued during her time in the Senate.

As attorney general, Harris issued bulletin guidelines to California law enforcement making clear “criminal justice policy should not be conflated with national immigration policy.” She also crafted legislation to ensure agencies help undocumented immigrants apply for U Visas, a form of immigration relief specifically set aside for victims of crime.

“She was really instrumental in making sure that law enforcement was doing the work of protecting and serving,” Salas said.

While in the Senate, Harris became a more outspoken ally of immigration activists.

As the front-runner the month before the 2016 election, the California Democrat held her first press conference at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles headquarters. There, she stood beside Dolores Huerta, a longtime Latina civil rights leader, and was praised for her commitment to passing immigration reform.

Harris was the first Senate Democrat to publicly vow to oppose any government spending bill that did not include changes to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which faced hurdles during former President Donald Trump’s administration. Salas said Harris was also a regular face at rallies for Dreamers and held regular roundtables in California with these young immigrants.

“She was bulldog for us during her time as a senator in California,” Salas said.

‘Border czar’

No, Harris is not the “border czar,” several immigration experts told The Bee.

In March 2021, Harris was tapped to lead the Biden administration’s national strategy to improve conditions and encourage potential migrants to remain in three Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, known as the “Northern Triangle.”

The “Root Causes Strategy” has five main goals: address economic issues, combat corruption and bolster democracy, improve human and labor rights, reduce violence and combat sexual and gender-based violence.

Recent vice presidents, including Mike Pence in the Trump administration and Biden in the Obama White House, were tasked with similar efforts in Central America.

The term “border czar” started getting used for Harris’ role, but her work had little to do with the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I think that is a misconception that we have,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto of the nonpartisan research Migration Policy Institute.

“Even under President Trump, by the way, with these types of strategies, the objective on paper has tried to make clear that even at the current level of investment in Central America, trying to reduce regular migration to the U.S.-Mexico border is not going to happen overnight,” Ruiz Soto said, “and it’s not going to happen over the course of one administration.”

Still, the term has been used by Republicans and Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, to blame Harris for the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border.

“Kamala Harris was appointed ‘border czar,’ as you know, in March of 2021,” Trump alleged in a call with reporters on Tuesday. “And since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country, and countless Americans have been killed by migrant crime because of her willful demolition of American borders and laws.”

Trump’s claims about a rise in migrant crime have been found false by independent fact-checkers.

Border crossings did spike after the pandemic: The Border Patrol had encounters with 2.5 million migrants in fiscal year 2023, which is from October 2022 to September 2023. Of note for the first time, per nonpartisan research Migration Policy Institute, migrants from beyond Mexico and northern Central America made up more than half of the number of unauthorized immigrants.

Harris came under fire from her own party for her blunt words toward Guatemalans during her first foreign trip as vice president. Speaking alongside President Alejandro Giammattei in June 2021, Harris told potential migrants: “Do not come. Do not come.”

“The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders,” she said, drawing criticism from those who said it ignored people’s right to seek asylum at the border.

A White House official told The Bee earlier this month that Harris has continued working on the strategy, having collaborated with the private sector to generate more than $5.2 billion in investments for job creation, internet access and folding people into the formal financial system in the region.

This March, three years since Harris was tapped to lead the strategy, the White House said it was on track to meet its goals to give $4 billion to the Central American countries in four years.

Republicans are unlikely to care about the focus of the “root causes” strategy. Instead, they’ll keep blasting away at Harris for having a pivotal role as the “border czar.” Immigration remains a top 2024 issue, one that’s been politicized with Democrats and Republicans fighting but not passing congressional legislation on in decades.

Whether Harris will separate herself from the Biden administration’s policies in the lead up to the election is yet to be seen.

“The Biden administration was really focused on the border and really trying to call out the Republicans for not proposing solutions either,” said the American Immigration Council’s Orozco. “And so hopefully there’s a message that she can sort of reframe and reshape around immigration.”