A California sheriff who was featured in a Harris campaign advertisement clarified that he “does not endorse” Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux explained to Fox News that in the video, in which he and other law enforcement officials are featured, Harris claims that she has “spent decades fighting violent crime” while serving as a “border state prosecutor.”
Boudreaux added that Harris “never cared about the cartels” or did anything to address the flow of illegal immigration across the border.
“In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office,” Boudreaux said in a statement to the outlet.
The ad features footage from when Harris, who had been serving as California’s Attorney General at that point, “came to the Valley in 2014 touting a years-long investigation into a multi-national drug operation, with ties to Mexican drug cartels and prison gangs,” Boudreaux explained.
The ad states:
Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime. As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As Vice President, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades, and as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fix the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.
Boudreaux added that “Harris never cared about the cartels and did nothing to stop people from illegally crossing the border.”
Harris’s visit during that time was described as being “smoke and mirrors,” with Boudreaux explaining to the outlet that he and other people had been in a green room and she “never came in and said hello” to them.
“She walked up front, gave her press, literally walked out, never said hi to any of us,” Boudreaux added. “I’m disgusted because, you know, she didn’t shake hands. She didn’t say hello. And she’s taken credit for all this work that the locals did.”
The advertisement from the Harris campaign comes after a report from June found that under the Biden-Harris administration, there have been more than 9.9 million illegal border crossings throughout the nation, along with over 8 million encounters at the southern border.
During a rally in Arizona, Harris vowed that if elected president, she would sign legislation providing illegal migrants in the United States with amnesty.
Harris also co-sponsored a bill to protect illegal migrants in the U.S. from being deported, and supported abolishing ICE, which is responsible for arresting and deporting drug dealers, rapists, and murderers.