by Nick Pope
Vice President Kamala Harris has changed her stance on spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a wall along the southern border, Axios reported Tuesday.
Harris now supports building a wall after being repeatedly attacked by former President Donald Trump for leading an unprecedented growth in illegal immigration to the US, as the unofficial “Biden administration”border tsar,, According to to Axios. Before her second presidential run, Harris called the border wall “un-American,” a “stupid waste of money” and Trump’s “medieval vanity project.”
Harris now supports bipartisanship border act proposed in February, which would require spending hundreds of millions of unspent public dollars to continue building the border wall, according to Axios. The office of Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, one of the lawmakers who negotiated the bill, projected the bill would spend $650 million to build the wall, a far cry from the $18 billion Trump wanted for the border wall in 2018.
Kamala Harris: ‘I know how critical security is, especially at our border’ photo:twitter.com/SJ7m2Hz4JW
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 23, 2024
The border flap is the latest example for Harris and her team distancing vice president from leftist positions she previously supported, such as Fracking ban and support Medicare-for-all health care system. Harris’ campaign has made efforts to portray Harris as ruthless against crime and in recent weeks there have been some hawks on the border, with one advertisement published in early August showing photos of Trump’s border wall and talking about his career as a “border state attorney.”
According to Axios, Harris’ campaign noted that the rejected border bill — which would have allowed an average of 5,000 migrants per day to cross the border — does not include any recent funding for the wall and includes other provisions, such as additional funds to pay for asylum lawyers and judges.
“Kamala’s RECORD proves she is a proponent of open borders. She has called the wall ‘un-American,’ ‘a waste of taxpayer money,’ ‘medieval,’ and said she will not ‘stop’ illegal immigration,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As a senator, Kamala tried to block President Trump’s border wall. As Border Czar, Kamala Harris has stopped construction of the border wall. Kamala’s ACTIONS speak much louder than the WORDS of the anonymous staff she hides behind.”
The Biden-Harris administration oversaw crisis on the border, which started after the administration he walked back several key policies that the Trump administration has implemented. Since 2021, there have been at least 6.7 million encounters with migrants at the southern border and 8 million encounters nationwide, According to to the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security.
Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
– – –
Nick Pope is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.