Vice President Kamala Harris refused to answer whether the Biden administration’s lenient border policies since her first day in office were a “mistake” during the 60 Minutes election special that aired Monday night.
Harris, whom Republicans continue to label the “border czar” to criticize her handling of the crisis at the southern border, has tried to project a tougher stance on illegal immigration since launching her presidential campaign. She even visited the U.S.-Mexico border late last month to improve her image on the issue, but that visit marked her first there in more than three years. The border crisis is arguably one of the Democratic candidate’s biggest vulnerabilities.
Leading up to his question, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker said the number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. had “quadrupled” during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration compared to the last year of the Trump administration. “Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?” Whitaker asked.
“It’s a long-standing problem, and solutions are at hand,” Harris responded, defending her record on immigration. “And from Day One, literally, we have been offering solutions.”
Moments before, she said the Biden administration proposed a bill to Congress “to fix our broken immigration system.” The bill “was not taken up,” she said.
Unsatisfied with her answer on record immigration numbers, Whitaker pressed again. “Was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?”
“I think the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem,” Harris said, as Whitaker tried repeating the question. “And the numbers today because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half. We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half, but we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.”
Harris wants to revive and sign the bipartisan border-security deal that failed in Congress earlier this year, according to her campaign website. Harris has also blamed former president Donald Trump for lobbying Republican lawmakers against passing the border deal that would have allocated $20 billion worth of federal resources to border security. She pinned the blame on Trump again during the 60 Minutes interview.
“Donald Trump got word that this bill was afoot and could be passed, and he wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said. “So he told his buddies in Congress, ‘Kill the bill. Don’t let it move forward.'”
While the Biden administration claimed it needed the border deal to secure the southern border, Republicans noted that the president could issue an executive order toward that same end. President Joe Biden ending up doing just that.
In June, Biden signed an order to crack down on the record number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time, it stipulated the restrictions of asylum access when official border crossings hit 2,500 per day. For the restrictions to be lifted, the daily numbers were required to average below 1,500 per day for seven consecutive days.
The Biden administration unveiled new rules last week, ordering that the daily numbers must stay below 1,500 daily encounters for nearly a month before the restrictions can be lifted. The changes went into effect on October 1, making it tougher for immigrants to apply for asylum in the U.S.
In addition to Harris, the 60 Minutes team requested to sit down with Trump. The Republican presidential nominee initially agreed to do the interview but backed out last week. During the first two minutes of Monday’s program, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley said Trump’s campaign gave “shifting explanations,” including concerns about fact-checking during the sit-down interview, for the candidate’s change of heart.
Pelley said the program would go on without Trump. It has remained a tradition for 60 Minutes to interview both major-party candidates in October leading up to the general election.
The election special was moved to Monday night due to CBS’s broadcast of the American Music Awards on Sunday night.