Kamala Harris Supported Taxpayer-Funded Transgender Surgeries, Defunding ICE in 2019 ACLU Questionnaire

Vice President Kamala Harris previously pledged to support numerous progressive causes, including taxpayer-funded gender-transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners, on a 2019 questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union when she last ran for president, according to a new report.

At the time, Harris expressed support for defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, abolishing immigrant detention, and decriminalizing federal drug possession for personal use, CNN’s KFile reported Monday. The former California senator made her positions clear in an ACLU questionnaire that she filled out when vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination that President Joe Biden ultimately clinched.

The resurfaced questionnaire comes as Harris unveiled a list of policy proposals on her campaign website weeks after she became the Democratic presidential nominee. Among her top policy proposals are the first federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries and a bill protecting abortions nationwide.

The vice president has faced a wave of criticism from Republicans for failing to adequately convey her political positions this election cycle while flip-flopping on certain issues, like the border. Late last month, Axios reported that Harris now backs the border wall after opposing the project during the Trump administration. There is no mention of the border wall on the Harris campaign’s webpage.

Harris pledges to revive and sign the bipartisan border-security bill that Senate Republicans killed earlier this year, according to the “issues” section on her campaign website. The $118 billion legislative package would have sent 1,500 more Customs and Border Protection agents to the southern border, among other provisions.

Her newly formed hawkish stance on illegal immigration contrasts with how she answered the 2019 ACLU questionnaire.

Harris was asked whether, as president, she would “reduce the size of the immigration detention system by at least 75%” by “cutting ICE’s detention budget” and “ending the detention of families, asylum seekers, and other vulnerable populations” in addition to two other actions.

In response, Harris explained she would “slash detention by at least 50%” and “halt funding for the construction or expansion of new [detention] facilities” with the help of her Detention Oversight Not Expansion (DONE) Act. “Our immigrant detention system is out of control, and I believe we must end the unfair incarceration of thousands of individuals, families and children,” Harris wrote.

She also committed to ending the use of ICE detainers, saying she would “focus enforcement on increasing public safety, not tearing apart immigrant families.” She added, “This includes requiring ICE to obtain a warrant where probable cause exists as to end the use of detainers.”

While defending San Francisco’s sanctuary status as the city’s district attorney, Harris supported a policy that handed over illegal immigrants under the age of 18 to federal authorities if arrested for suspected felonies, regardless of the conviction. Later serving as California attorney general, she targeted criminal gangs along the southern border and opposed the Obama administration’s policies that sent non-criminal illegal immigrants into deportation proceedings.

When asked whether she would use “executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care,” Harris replied in the affirmative.

“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition,” she elaborated. “That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates.”

As state attorney general, Harris previously defended the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s attempts to block gender-reassignment surgeries for transgender inmates in the state. Facing criticism over that position while running for president in 2019, she said defending the policy conflicted with her beliefs but did it nonetheless in hopes of changing it.

Harris also said she would support the decriminalization of drug possession by legalizing federal marijuana, citing her co-sponsorship of the Marijuana Justice Act.

“Throughout my career I have supported treating drug addiction as a public health issue, focusing on rehabilitation over incarceration for drug-related offenses,” she wrote.

However, in a viral moment during a 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate, then-Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) criticized Harris for her record on criminal prosecutions related to drug possession.

“She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said of Harris. “She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep [a] cash-bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

Gabbard, who became an independent in 2022, is reportedly helping former president Donald Trump prepare to debate Harris Tuesday night. The former congresswoman, like Democrat-turned-independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., endorsed Trump last month and continues campaigning for the Republican ticket.