A recent advertisement from former President Donald Trump’s campaign has come under scrutiny for using an edited quote to falsely accuse Vice President Kamala Harris of supporting an immigration policy that does not exist. The ad appears to have selectively edited a statement from Harris, distorting its meaning to suggest that she proposed opening the U.S. border to immigrants from around the world, a policy she has not advocated.
According to CNN, the ad includes a narrator stating, “Attention seniors: Kamala Harris has promised amnesty for the 10 million illegals she allowed in as border czar, making them eligible for Social Security. Studies warn this will lead to cuts in your Social Security benefits.” Additionally, a quote displayed on-screen, attributed to the Center for Immigration Studies—a group advocating for reduced immigration—reads: “Harris’ amnesty imposes large cost on Social Security.”
The ad also gives the false impression that, during the Biden-Harris administration, 10 million people entered the U.S. illegally and remain in the country. A graphic on screen reads, “over 10 million illegal border crossings.” Meanwhile, the ad’s narrator says, “under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.”
But all the people who were encountered at the border are not still here; millions were removed or denied entry, almost immediately.
Harris addressed her role in a June 2021 NBC News interview with Lester Holt in Guatemala. A clip from that interview is featured in the campaign ad embedded above.
Apparently, in the interview, Harris said that she believed the border and the underlying reasons for illegal immigration are both important.
While there have been around 10 million official border “encounters” with migrants nationwide during the Biden-Harris administration, this figure includes people who were quickly expelled from the country and counts each attempt by individuals who tried to enter more than once.
Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, said that the actual number of people allowed into the country under the Biden-Harris administration would be closer to six million, not 10 million. This estimate is generous, as it includes people admitted under designated parole programs for Ukrainians and Afghans, those permitted to enter legally under a program for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and counts every “encounter” at the northern border as a successful entry, even though not all encounters resulted in entry.
Recently, Harris in her speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, she had committed to signing a bipartisan border security bill that Trump had previously helped block earlier this year. She stated, “I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”
The phrase “earned pathway to citizenship” indicates that Harris aims to provide legal status to a specific group of undocumented individuals, as she has previously expressed.
Meanwhile, Harris will appear with her vice presidential pick, Tim Walz, in a CNN primetime special airing at 9 p.m. ET from Georgia. She is currently on a bus tour aimed at making Georgia, a swing state the GOP believed it could win in November, competitive again. The interview is the most significant event of the campaign between last week’s Democratic convention in Chicago and the upcoming presidential debate in Philadelphia on September 10.
