Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., joins a 2018 U.S. Capitol protest against threats by then-President Donald Trump against Central American asylum-seekers to separate children from their parents along the southwest border to deter migrants from crossing into the United States.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
With the Biden administration facing low approval ratings on immigration, and Republicans blaming Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for what they call a “border invasion,” Harris is pushing back, spotlighting in campaign ads and speeches what she says is her history of tough border enforcement.
But a look at Harris’ record as a public official in California — the state with the largest number and share of immigrants — finds a more nuanced picture. Longtime political observers say her experience as the daughter of immigrants has intertwined with her career as a prosecutor to form a pattern: pro-immigration but tough in enforcing the law.
Dan Morain, a California political reporter who wrote a 2021 biography of Harris, says her parents took her to their respective home countries of India and Jamaica, where she learned about her roots. And, as high-achieving scholars committed to civil rights, her parents embodied a belief that, with persistence, in America great things are possible.
“Kamala Harris has lived the second-generation immigrant story,” Morain said. “It's ingrained in her that immigration is fundamental to the United States.”
With immigration at the core of her own life experience, Harris has a history of supporting immigrant communities and legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. But her work in California, including as the state’s attorney general, provides her with opportunities to also tout law enforcement measures she’s taken on the issue.
Harris as DA and AG
As San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2010, Harris went after abusive employers shortchanging immigrant workers. And she encouraged immigrant communities to feel safe dealing with law enforcement.
But she also favored turning over juvenile immigrants arrested for crimes to immigration agents, bucking the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on how to apply the city's sanctuary ordinance, which restricted cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
“That she would take a dim view of people who break the law is in keeping with who she was,” Morain said. “I mean, she's a prosecutor. That's what her job was.”
As California's attorney general from 2011 to 2016, Harris brought that forceful approach to tackling cross-border crime. At a presidential campaign rally in Atlanta last month, Harris spotlighted that work.
“I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers that came into our country illegally,” she said. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”
Sonja Diaz worked as policy counsel on the attorney general’s executive staff in those days. She says she saw Harris make that a particular focus.
"She did a lot of work to address the proliferation of transnational criminal organizations, not just with respect to drugs, but also the issue of human trafficking," she said.
Harris built ties with her law enforcement counterparts in Mexico and El Salvador, added Diaz, who now runs a Latino research institute at UCLA.
“To do this type of work necessitated partnerships and bilateral relationships that could really move the needle,” she said.
Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris gives a news conference in Los Angeles on Nov. 30, 2010.
Damian Dovarganes / AP
But when thousands of unaccompanied children began arriving at the border in 2014, she led with humanity, says Diaz. Harris convened government, philanthropy, nonprofits and corporate law firms, securing tens of millions of dollars so children going into immigration court alone had lawyers.
“The way that she acted was … to identify how we as Californians under her leadership could start to fill the holes in access to justice and representation for these kids,” Diaz said.
"She has stood with us in our worst moments"
On Capitol Hill last month, advocates rallied for a bill that would offer a path to citizenship to long-term undocumented immigrants. At the rally, Angelica Salas, who runs the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, known as CHIRLA, said she and other advocates are energized to have Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket.
“We know her,” she said. “She comes from California, so she knows the immigrant community. She has stood with us in our worst moments.”
When Donald Trump became president in 2017 and Harris was a new U.S. senator, Salas said Harris met with CHIRLA members, reassuring undocumented immigrants fearful of Trump's threats of mass deportation that she would fight for them. She also stood with Dreamers, young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, when Trump tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
And Salas says Harris did more than speak out when the Trump administration separated children from migrant parents at the border.
“She went to detention centers to talk to the mothers whose children had been taken away from them,” she said. “So we have incredible faith that she will be an incredible champion for our families.”
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The Biden-Harris administration struggles with migration
Now in the White House, Harris has had to wrestle with immigration from another standpoint.
She’s part of a Biden administration that has been confronted with record numbers of international migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border and attempting to enter the country illegally, often to request asylum. Border enforcement and asylum adjudication agencies have been swamped.
In 2021, President Biden tasked Harris with addressing the “root causes” of migration from three Central American countries that were then the source of most unauthorized migration — a role that Republicans have falsely dubbed “border czar.” Analysts say Harris made some headway on business investment to create jobs, and on promoting the rule of law, but the results of such efforts could be many years in the future.
To bring down the number of unauthorized border crossings more immediately, the Biden administration has restricted access to asylum, among other measures.
Harris joined Biden in calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill, hammered out early this year, that would pour more resources into the Border Patrol and immigration courts, and allow the government to summarily expel people without hearing asylum claims if border encounters reach a certain level. Harris has slammed Trump for undercutting Republican support and tanking the bill's chances of passage.
In response to these policies, many immigrant rights groups have sharply criticized Biden for what they say are moves that override the legal right to ask for protection from persecution. But so far, they're not attacking Harris in the same way.
Political observers say that may be because — with the November election approaching — advocates recognize the alternative to a Harris presidency is a return to Trump’s hard-line policies.
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"We'll see if that works as a political message"
Though three-quarters of Americans say they believe the border is either a crisis or a major problem, according to a recent Gallup poll, two-thirds say immigration is good for the country and vast majorities back an earned path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, especially Dreamers.
Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., says that is the backdrop to a presidential election that offers starkly diverging approaches to immigration.
“We've seen the Trump campaign lean into the idea that immigration is bad for the country," he said. “But actually, most Americans don't believe that. They're worried about the border, which is a specific part of the immigration debate.”
Selee predicts Harris will try to look for the middle ground, bringing together the two sides of her own life experience.
“We're going to see Vice President Harris talk about immigration as a good thing for the country, because she's the child of two immigrants, and she understands how important it is for America's future. And at the same time [she’ll] talk like a prosecutor when she's talking about the border, specifically,” he said. “We'll see if that works as a political message.”
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