Vice President Kamala Harris visits the US-Mexico border with US Border Patrol Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin in Douglas, Arizona, on September 27, 2024. | Rebecca Noble / AFP via Getty Images
Fox News was never going to be a friendly venue for Vice President Kamala Harris. In an appearance on Special Report With Bret Baier, she was asked about some of the American right’s top fascinations and talking points: gender-affirming surgeries, Joe Biden’s mental acuity, the prospect of war with Iran. And — of course — she got tough questions about immigration policy and the southern border.
It was in answering those questions that Harris demonstrated how much the Democratic Party is moving right — toward the ideological center on immigration — under the banner of her candidacy.
She chose not to defend the virtue of immigration, or of immigrants themselves, and continued to cede the playing field to the right. There were no references to the nation’s immigrant roots or the value of those immigrants (here legally or not) that Baier kept asking about. And there was no condemnation of Donald Trump’s stated plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. She didn’t mention it, even as he pitches invoking archaic laws to round up and deport millions of people living in the United States.
Instead, Harris used the interview to further distance herself from her past and her party’s left flank on immigration. Did she regret the immigrant-friendly positions she took in 2019 to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses, qualify for free tuition at some universities, or obtain public health insurance under a universal plan?
Not no.
“Listen, that was five years ago, and I’m very clear that I will follow the law. I have made that statement over and over again,” Harris responded.
If so, Baier followed up, why did she select a running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, who signed some of those same proposals into state law in Minnesota?
Harris paused before saying that her ticket is “very clear that we must support and enforce federal law and that is exactly what we will do.”
And so the pattern repeated itself: Given opportunities to defend migrants in the face of classic right-wing fearmongering (as when she was asked about “single adult men who went on to commit heinous crimes”), Harris would cede the premise and pivot to the bipartisan border bill Biden proposed earlier this year that Trump helped tank. She did the same when asked if she regretted the Biden administration’s repeal of Trump-era executive orders restricting immigration — citing a bill the White House proposed that she said would’ve “fixed our immigration system.” But she omitted that it also would have provided a pathway to citizenship for certain undocumented immigrants already living in the US.
This all continues a trend for Harris. Just last week, at a town hall hosted by the Spanish-language media network Univision, Harris was twice presented with opportunities to invoke and condemn Trump’s mass deportation plans when speaking to attendees who had family who were deported or unable to get health care because they lacked legal status. She passed on that chance, instead referencing her past support for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients before pivoting to talk about reviving the bipartisan border bill.
And since becoming the nominee and headlining a national party convention that tended to reference immigration in the context of needing more hardline border policies, she’s continued to push for a bipartisan border bill that many progressive and liberal immigration advocacy groups and members of her own party don’t support. Those critics are still biting their tongues — pointing out the need to unite to win the election and keep a roundly anti-immigrant Trump from controlling the executive branch — but that truce will only hold as far as November 5.
vox.com