Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris' impact on border policy and the latter's work in California on immigration have taken center stage as her policies as state attorney general and nationally as in the Biden administration over the past three years to half a year were questioned by GOP vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance as he argued with his rival Minnesota governor Tim Walz in the CBS debate in New York Tuesday night.
In the first half hour of the debate, Vance was asked whether a second Trump administration would separate children from their parents, a policy implemented by the former president that was abandoned after massive backlash. Vance responded by blaming Harris for the Biden administration's policies.
“We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started out by saying she wants to undo all of Donald Trump's policies on orders: 94 executive orders, suspension of deportations, decriminalization of illegal immigrants, massive increase in existing asylum fraud in our system that opened the floodgates, and what that means is that a large amount of fentanyl is coming into our country,” Vance responded.
President Joe Biden has tasked Vice President Harris with leading U.S. diplomatic efforts and working alongside Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to examine root causes and stem migration from these countries to the United States. In 2021, Republicans dubbed her “border czar,” suggesting she was tasked with policing the southern border; that false notion has now been revived in this election cycle.
In his response, Walz, who as governor of Minnesota signed legislation making undocumented immigrants eligible for driver's licenses and the low-income health insurance marketplace, supported Harris' work in California as a prosecutor general.
“Kamala Harris was the attorney general of the largest state, a border state, in California. He is the only person in this race who has prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drug interventions. But look, we all want to solve it. Most of us want to solve this problem – and that's the United States Congress; those are the Border Patrol agents; that is the Chamber of Commerce; that's most Americans out here. That's why we had the fairest and toughest immigration bill this nation has ever seen,” Walz said, later reminding Vance and the audience that Trump worked to kill the bill during his presidency because works in its favor as a polarizing election. problem.
Both candidates avoided questions in this back-and-forth: Vance never answered the question about family separation, and Walz punted when later asked about mass deportations, a question he would probably prefer to avoid since polling numbers show that Americans are increasingly in favor of this as a solution to the border crisis.
When forced to answer a question about the child separation policy again by moderator Margaret Brennan, Vance would not say whether it would be reimplemented and again blamed Harris for the border crisis.
“The bottom line is we already have massive child separations thanks to an open border. I didn't accuse Kamala Harris of inviting drug mules. I said he allowed Mexico to operate freely in this country, and we know they use children as drug mules, and it's a disgrace and it needs to stop,” Vance said.
Walz managed to center the immigration debate on the topic that emerged from last month's presidential debate over allegations of immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. This was a story echoed by Vance and then amplified by Trump while discussing Harris. It was debunked, but it persisted as a story and grabbed headlines for weeks.
“We could come together and solve this issue if we didn't let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue,” Walz said. “And the fallout in Springfield was that the governor had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergartners to school standing by Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution… when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and evilize other human beings.”