Vice President Kamala Harris previously led a group of Democratic senators in calling for a reduction in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to reject appropriations entirely for additional Border Patrol agents and border wall construction.
In 2018, then-Sen. Harris and her fellow Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee led several other Democrats in a letter to Senate appropriators. “We urge the Committee additionally to reject President Trump’s proposal for funding to hire new Border Patrol personnel at this time,” they wrote.
Another signatory of the document pushing back on President Trump’s administration and its request for funding in fiscal year 2019 was vulnerable Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, who now faces a competitive challenge in her bid for re-election in November.
The lawmakers pleaded with appropriators at the time to “reject any funding for President Trump’s border wall.”
“We urge you to reduce funding for the administration’s reckless immigration enforcement operations that are tearing families apart and harming our economy,” they said at the time.
Harris, Baldwin, and the other co-signers denounced Trump’s administration for expanding its enforcement of immigration laws. They claimed he did so in an “indiscriminate manner, failing to distinguish Dreamers and other hardworking individuals with deep community ties from actual threats to our public safety.”
At the time, the Trump administration had declared Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), referred to by Democrats as “Dreamers,” to be unconstitutional and ended the program. The Supreme Court would later rule against the Trump administration for failing to justify its claim that the Obama-era program had been unlawful from the beginning. The court did not determine that the program could not be abolished, however.
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DACA allows illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as children to apply for deferred removal from the country for a period of two years. This deferred action can be renewed. Recipients are able to get work authorization but aren’t granted lawful status.
In the letter, the senators pointed to the administration’s enforcement of laws against illegal immigrants who did not have established criminal histories in the U.S. as evidence of its “indiscriminate” effort.
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“During Fiscal Year 2017, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrests of individuals without criminal convictions doubled compared to the prior year,” Harris, Baldwin and their colleagues wrote. “During the last three months of 2017, ICE arrests of individuals who had no criminal background tripled compared to the same period the prior year.”
The Democrats further suggested that ICE’s enforcement efforts were undermining “public safety” due to illegal immigrants being detained in “workplaces and neighborhoods.”
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In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for Baldwin said, “Tammy Baldwin knows that we need to fix our broken immigration system and invest in smart border security. She also knows that Wisconsinites do not want to go back to the cruel days of separating families at the border. That’s why she has consistently voted — including in a recent bipartisan deal — to strengthen our border with more agents and technology, create a fair immigration system, and stop illegal drugs like fentanyl from coming into the country.”
Harris’ campaign did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for publication.
Since Harris launched her 2024 campaign for president, she has toughened her stance on border security.
“We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it. Comprehensive reform that includes, yes, strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship,” she told a Las Vegas, Nevada, crowd recently.
Harris took aim at Trump for urging Republican senators against supporting a border and immigration bill earlier this year that was negotiated by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn. The measure has been touted by Democratic lawmakers as a “bipartisan” border bill, but during its most recent procedural vote, both Lankford and Sinema voted against it.
Democrats, including Harris, have claimed Trump single-handedly tanked the bill, but Republican senators told Fox News Digital the bill was already a nonstarter for them, regardless of the former president’s opinion. Some even suggested the measure would have made the border crisis worse.
Despite Harris’ claim she is supportive of securing the border, under the Biden-Harris administration, 99 terror watchlist suspects have been released into the U.S. following arrests by Border Patrol at the southern border between fiscal years 2021 and 2023.
Thirty-four additional terror watchlist suspects are in federal custody but have not been removed from the U.S., according to data from the Department of Homeland Security that was provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
Fox News’ Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
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