OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris, as a U.S. senator from California, once suggested that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are comparable to the Ku Klux Klan, sparking major pushback from a high-ranking official from the agency and outrage from Republicans.
As many people point out, President Joe Biden assigned Harris the role of “Border czar” in March 2021, just a few months after the two of them took office as the “Biden-Harris administration,” and a video clip of the exchange from 2018 is currently making the rounds on social media.
The clip also went viral again after Biden decided on Sunday to end his reelection campaign and endorse Harris for the Democratic Party nomination.
“Democrat Senator Kamala Harris compares ICE to the KKK and appears to suggest that they are a terrorist group during a Senate hearing to consider the nomination of Ronald Vitello to be the director of ICE. 51% of ICE agents were Hispanic or Latino at the end of fiscal year 2016,” Daily Wire senior reporter Ryan Saavedra noted on the X platform this week with a clip of the exchange.
WATCH:
Democrat Senator Kamala Harris compares ICE to the KKK and appears to suggest that they are a terrorist group during a Senate hearing to consider the nomination of Ronald Vitello to be the director of ICE.
51% of ICE agents were Hispanic or Latino at the end of fiscal year 2016. pic.twitter.com/3coo3hljET
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 15, 2018
“Are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and the discretion at ICE is being used to enforce the laws, and do you see any parallels?” she asked.
Vitiello pushed back, saying, “I do not see any parallels” between the immigration enforcement agency and the white supremacist group.
Illegal immigration has set records under the Biden-Harris administration and has become one of the top 2024 election issues.
The Republican National Committee, within an hour of Biden stepping aside, posted a clip of Harris talking in 2018 about considering abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) altogether, further solidifying her radical left stance on the agency and its mission.
“I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE and its role, the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing,” she told MSNBC. “And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”
In a memo acquired by Fox News, the National Republican Senatorial Committee highlighted her comments and earlier commitment to making crossing the border illegally less of a crime. It also labeled her the “border czar” and mentioned her previous backing for the Biden-Harris administration’s initiatives to establish a route to citizenship for illegal migrants. “Candidates should not be shy about aggressively tying their opponents to Kamala Harris’ extreme agenda,” the memo said.
Former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf tied her record to that of the Biden administration in general.
“Important to remember that VP Harris has only visited the border one time in the last 3.5 years. The Biden-Harris Administration does not take this issue seriously and their policies have left the American people less secure and more vulnerable,” he said in an X post.
During her unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, Harris had also promised to “shut down all government contracts with private prisons” for ICE enforcement.
Numbers USA, an organization advocating for reduced immigration overall, pointed out that it had assigned Harris an F- grade for her stance on immigration issues as a California senator.
“Kamala Harris was put in charge of the destruction of immigration enforcement. She has worked to abolish ICE since her first day in office,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News.
“Everything Kamala Harris has said and done in her career proves that she bows to the demands of far left, open-borders activists. The American people will have a clear choice in November — mass deportation or mass release of illegal aliens and violent criminals into American communities,” he added.
