Fact Check: Axios Claims Kamala Harris Promises ‘Tough’ Immigration Policy

CLAIM: Axios claimed, “[Vice President Kamala] Harris has moved to the center on immigration in recent months and embraced a get-tough stance on border security.”

VERDICT: False. Harris has repeatedly said she favors the wealth-shifting immigration expansion bill that administration officials and senators drafted in February 2024.

The Axios claim was posted on Monday under the headline “Harris mum on her past pledge for ‘Dreamers.'” The article, by Alex Thompson and Stef Kight, claimed and suggested that Harris was moderating her radically pro-migration policies during the 2024 election campaign:

Vice President Kamala Harris is backing away from her past promise to use presidential power to unilaterally give a path to citizenship to 2 million “Dreamers” — undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Why it matters: It’s part of a pattern in which Harris and her team have changed her positions or declined to say whether she still supports some of the progressive policies she ran on during her presidential campaign in 2019.

Harris has moved to the center on immigration in recent months and embraced a get-tough stance on border security while casting herself as a former “border state prosecutor.”

However, the news site offered little evidence to back its claim, except for the refusal of Harris’s aides to reaffirm her prior radical statements.

For example, Harris and her campaign have repeatedly declared Harris’s support for the Senate’s radical, migration-expanding border bill.

Harris declared during her speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC):

Here is my pledge to you as president: I will bring back the bipartisan [February 2024] border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law. I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship [amnesty] and secure our border.

The phrase “earned pathway to citizenship” is a euphemism to describe amnesty for the many millions of illegal immigrants in the United States.

RELATED EXCLUSIVE: Large Group of Migrants from Many Nations Crosses Border into Arizona

In September, Harris’s website was updated with her campaign promises, including a section on migration:

As President, she will bring back the [February 2024] bipartisan border security bill and sign it into law. At the same time, she knows that our immigration system is broken and needs comprehensive reform that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.

Democrats carefully wrote the February bill to look tough and “centrist” while maximizing migration via disguised loopholes in border law.

The giveaway bill would have allowed officials to provide fast-track citizenship at the border, grant work permits to millions of illegal immigrants per year, and allow employers to fly in cheap foreign workers instead of hiring better-paid Americans. In effect, it would allow the second branch of government, the president’s Executive Branch, to import as many foreign workers, renters, and consumers as it deemed best, with the advice of lobbyists, of course, regardless of what Americans prefer.

The bill’s provisions are very unpopular.

Fifty-six percent of registered voters favor a policy of “arresting and deporting thousands of illegal immigrants,” according to a poll YouGov conducted in August. The policies are unpopular, in part, because they would damage American communities and transfer vast wealth from employees and families to migrants and investors.

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), slammed the Harris platform for wanting more amnesty and more migration:

What she won’t tell you is that the [February] bill also codifies catch-and-release, allows up to 1.8 million illegals to enter before the border could be closed, gives billions of taxpayer dollars to the same NGOs that are driving the invasion and expands the executive parole powers used by Biden [to import quasi-legal migrants] instead of limiting them. The bill’s author Sen. Murphy [D-CT] put it best when he admitted that, under his bill, “the border never closes.”

Many other establishment outlets are also echoing the no-evidence claim that Harris will be “tough” on migration.

“Kamala Harris supports an earned pathway to citizenship and wants to revive the tough border compromise law that would close loopholes in the asylum process and give the president more authority to shut down the border,” the Washington Post claimed on September 10.

“Harris vows tougher approach on migration, supports weapons for Israel,” Reuters claimed on August 30 before quoting vague promises to enforce the nation’s loopholed border law without also promising to actually reduce migration:

Harris said she would renew a push for comprehensive border legislation that would tighten migration into the United States, and vowed to “enforce our laws” against border crossings.

“We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally, and there should be consequence,” Harris said.

The Associated Press wrote, “Barbara Comstock, who co-chaired Nikki Haley’s GOP presidential campaign earlier this year, is now backing Harris … [because of her] support for a tough bipartisan immigration bill.”

Also, media outlets have ignored the question of if a Harris presidency would have the political capital to reduce the inflow of subordinate migrant workers required by the Democrat Party’s big-spending “Bidenomics” policy.

The policy is enabled by President Joe Biden’s semi-independent, investor-backed, pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas. In September, the House-impeached border chief told a Texas audience:

We look to the north, with Canada. Canada takes a look at its market needs, and it says, “You know what? We need 700,000 foreign workers to address our labor needs domestically.” And, so, they build a visa system for that year to address the current market condition. And they say, “We’re going to bring in a million people.” And it’s market sensitive.

We [in the United States] are dealing with numerical caps on labor-driven visas that were set in 1996. It’s 2024. The world has changed. It is remarkable how there can be [elite] agreement that [the visa system] is broken and not have an agreement on a solution. The country is suffering as a result of it.

Pro-migration advocates view the “tough” claims as just a campaign strategy, and they expect Harris will support their pro-migration goals, according to multiple media reports.

“We know, based on where she’s been in the past, that her policies are probably going to be aligned with UnidosUS’ policies,” Carmen Feliciano, the advocacy chief for UnidosUS, a pro-migration group formerly named LaRaza, told Politico in August.