FIRST ON FOX:The immigration chief under former President Trump is seeking to sound the alarm on Vice President Kamala Harris’ “open borders” policy and the truth about the crisis at the southern border — just as Harris claims she is the right candidate to tackle the border.
Tom Homan, a Fox News contributor who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under former President Trump, is preparing to participate in a series of virtual town hall meetings with his nonprofit, Border911 Inc.
He wants the town hall meetings to raise awareness of the impacts of the current crisis at the southern border, including sex trafficking and the smuggling of fentanyl into the United States.
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In this context, Homan questions Kamala Harris’s rhetoric that she is tough on border security. A recent Harris ad said that “fixing the border is tough, and so is Kamala Harris.”
President Trump and Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan discuss during a law enforcement roundtable on sanctuary cities in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 20, 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Border911 Inc., which is run by border and national security experts from both Republican and Democratic administrations, released a video that instead points to past comments by Harris that it says conflict with that narrative.
Among those statements, she said she was open to “starting from scratch” with ICE, decriminalizing illegal crossings, supporting “sanctuary” city laws and comparing ICE to the Ku Klux Klan as a senator.
“Kamala Harris wants everyone to believe that she’s some kind of border hawk now. But since her days as a district attorney in San Francisco, her statements and her policies have made that clear,” Homan, who has served under multiple administrations, told Fox News Digital. “The fact is that she’s an open-border radical and, along with Joe Biden, she’s personally responsible for the current crisis.”
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Republicans and the Trump campaign have focused on the border, including Harris’ role in addressing the root causes of migration. They have linked the historic spikes seen during the border crisis to the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, including the end of Trump-era policies that they say have successfully brought the border under control.
Conservatives have sought to portray Harris as a hardliner on illegal immigration, highlighting many of the remarks made in the video, just as Harris’ campaign has sought to portray her as the right candidate for border security.
A Harris campaign adviser told Fox News last month that Harris’ positions have been “shaped by three years of effective leadership in the Biden-Harris administration.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Leadership Conference in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Her campaign said she believes illegal border crossings are illegal and supports “continuing to ensure adequate resources to enforce our laws and prioritize the detention and removal of individuals who pose a threat to public safety and national security, as well as ensuring compliance with immigration procedures and decisions, including removal.”
More broadly, she stressed her support for the bipartisan Senate bill The bill, which emerged from House negotiations earlier this year, increases funding for the border, including ICE beds and a mechanism to limit asylum entries into the United States. Conservatives have said the bill would only serve to codify high levels of illegal immigration.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS
“Donald Trump’s only ‘plan’ to secure our border is to rip mothers from their children and display a few xenophobic signs at the Republican National Convention. He derailed the bipartisan deal on border security because, for Donald Trump, it was never about solutions, it was just about problems,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
“Like everything about Donald Trump, it’s never been about helping the country, it’s only about helping himself. There’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that’s Vice President Harris,” he said.
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Homan, however, says he is not trying to tell voters who they should choose in November, but simply to present the facts.
“We want to show the truth to the American people so they can make their own decisions,” he told Fox News Digital.
