Kamala Harris defends record on immigration: “Solutions are at hand”

Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning on a pledge to toughen border restrictions as Republicans hammer her over the Biden-Harris administration’s record on immigration.

Harris in late September visited the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time as the Democratic presidential nominee and embraced President Biden’s recent crackdown on asylum seekers, which produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. Harris said she would take it even further.

Immigration issues are not new, but during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, a record number of unauthorised immigrants crossed the border while other limitations and pandemic-era immigration regulations were relaxed.

“We have the answers. And we have really been providing answers since Day One,” Harris remarked.

She cited the recent decline in illegal immigration: internal Department of Homeland Security statistics obtained by CBS News show that illegal crossings fell this year, with the southern border reaching its lowest point of President Biden’s administration in September.

Earlier this year, bipartisan legislation aiming to overhaul the immigration system failed in Congress after Trump urged Republicans to oppose it.

“We need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem,” Harris said.

As vice president, Harris’ responsibilities on the immigration issue have often been mischaracterized by her political opponents. Mr. Biden in 2021 tasked Harris with leading the administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the “root causes” of migration from Central America’s Northern Triangle — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Trump has wrongly called Harris the administration’s “border czar.”