Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Douglas, Arizona, on Friday, touting her support for a failed bill to expand overall immigration put forth by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) that faced broad bipartisan opposition. Harris has not explained how she would convince lawmakers to revive the bill.
Harris is visiting a Port of Entry in Douglas and will deliver remarks on Friday evening. Those remarks are expected to include Harris’s usual stump speech on immigration where she touts her support for a failed Senate framework that would, among other things:
- Increase legal immigration to the United States
- Expedite work permits for migrants arriving at the southern border
- Permit tens of thousands of border crossings every week before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could clamp down on regions between Ports of Entry
- Codify the Biden-Harris administration’s parole pipeline into federal law
- Provide taxpayer-funded lawyers to certain Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) and mentally incompetent migrants
“Donald Trump tanked a bill to improve border security — just so he can win this election. As I have shown throughout my career, I won’t back down from my plan to make our border more secure,” Harris wrote on X alongside a new ad.
While former President Donald Trump lobbied against the Senate bill, so did most Republicans and several prominent Democrats.
In early January of this year, the Immigration Accountability Project helped leak the details of the bill to the American public.
While Trump urged Republicans to oppose the bill due to its provisions, House and Senate Republicans had already started opposing the bill when details leaked. Likewise, House and Senate Democrats began opposing the bill as well, because it did not include amnesty for illegal aliens.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), during a Congressional Hispanic Conference press conference, called the bill “unacceptable.”
“These changes are permanent in nature without any meaningful relief for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, including DREAMers that have lived here for a decade or more,” Menendez said:
Major chunks of this legislation read like an enforcement wish list from the Trump administration, and directly clash with the most basic tenets of our asylum system. It would permanently contort our asylum system by making it harder for asylum seekers to have their claims heard and making it impossible for asylum claims to be adjudicated at all based on arbitrarily set trigger numbers that could shut down our border.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) said he opposed the bill because of its lack of amnesty provisions for illegal aliens, saying:
When I was sworn into this office, I made a promise that I would fight to fix our outdated immigration system and to create a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have been forced to live in the shadows of our country for far too long. Not a day has gone by that I have not tried to reach out across the aisle to do exactly that. It is critical that we support our allies in their fight to defend democracy and provide humanitarian relief, but not at the expense of dismantling our asylum system while ultimately failing to alleviate the challenges at our border.
Likewise, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) ended up opposing the bill, along with nearly every Senate Republican.
Despite bipartisan opposition, Harris has staked her immigration agenda on the bill.
During an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle this week, Harris was asked how she would help American cities and towns that are overwhelmed by record-setting illegal immigration on her watch.
Harris responded that she would back the Senate bill, which expands overall immigration levels, while also supporting amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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