Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
If Kamala Harris becomes president, the border would become nothing more than an imaginary line, the world would be allowed to apply for asylum and hardly anyone would be deported.
Don’t take my word for it — take Kamala Harris’.
There are two sources that offer a detailed look at her likely approach to immigration issues, freely available to anyone who cares to look.
The first are the bills related to immigration enforcement that Harris herself wrote or co-sponsored during her four years in the Senate.
There’s no need to read between the lines here, nor can these be dismissed as off-the-cuff comments pandering to the audience du jour.
If Harris’ “values” haven’t changed, as she insists, her legislation offers a detailed outline of how she would put those values into practice.
And, hoo boy, is it radical.
Depleted enforcement
Harris’ bills would have made it harder for the DHS to detain illegal aliens, handcuffed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and prevented it from enforcing immigration law, facilitated asylum fraud, as well as prohibited the use of programs successfully employed under the Trump administration.
A few examples. At the border, her Immigration Enforcement Moratorium Act would have required the DHS to release, and give a work permit to, every illegal immigrant caught at the border during a public health emergency, with only very narrow exceptions.
Detention is the only sure way to make sure illegal immigrants actually show up for hearings and leave when ordered to do so.
And yet Harris — in her DONE law, or Detention Oversight, Not Expansion Act — sought to cut the number of detention beds, end mandatory detention, prohibit the detention of minors even if they’re criminals, and make it almost impossible to detain any border-infiltrator with minor children.
Her legislation would also have prohibited the detention — or even the use of an ankle monitor! — for any illegal immigrant who is a member of a “vulnerable population,” including anyone who applies for asylum or is over 65 or is the family breadwinner or claims to be gay or transgender, or literally any other group designated as “vulnerable” by the DHS secretary.
Harris’ bills would also have gone a long way toward effectively abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
One, the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, sought to create “ICE-free zones.”
ICE uses discretion in deciding whether or not to arrest an illegal alien at, for instance, a church or school — such judgment calls are normal police procedure.
But Harris wanted to completely bar ICE from any enforcement activity within 1,000 feet of any hospital, school, church, courthouse, funeral protest march, even school field trips.
This would have put virtually all illegal immigrants beyond the reach of the law, unless they happen to find themselves in the middle of the woods in northern Maine or the Nevada desert.
WH ‘Unified Agenda’
Harris’ legislative record is chock-full of this kind of lunacy, but there’s an even more immediate part of her plans for immigration.
Twice a year, whatever administration is in office publishes a roundup of regulations that are in the pipeline.
The most recent version of what’s known as the “Unified Agenda” was issued in August — by the administration of which Harris is the No. 2 member.
They would almost certainly be implemented if Harris were promoted to the number-one spot.
These regulatory changes aren’t as radical as Harris’ proposed legislation only because the executive branch can’t actually change the law on its own.
But unlike the proposed bills, these rules are all but certain to take effect and all point in the same direction — loosening the borders.
One of the regulatory changes in the works would expand the U-visa amnesty program for illegal-alien victims or witnesses of crimes.
This program is already a scandal, with people staging fake crimes in order to qualify.
Rather than tightening the program, the new rules that would take effect under a Harris-Walz administration would likely expand eligibility and, most importantly, codify the dangerous Biden-Harris practice of issuing work permits just for applying, guaranteeing ever-more crime “victims” and “witnesses.”
Other Harris rule changes in the works: making it harder for ICE agents to detail illegal aliens; loosening the standards for naturalization; and making it easier for people who persecuted others abroad to get asylum.
Kamala Harris has been cagey about offering details of what she would do if promoted to the Oval Office. But we don’t need to guess as to her intentions — she has a clear agenda for immigration. It would be an understatement to call it extreme.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.