Sen. Elizabeth Warren predicted that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the White House in 100 days, she will fight for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
During an exchange about how voters have given Harris, 59, and President Biden, 81, poor marks for handling the border crisis, Warren (D-Mass.) argued that the onus is on Congress to tackle it.
“Recognize — and I know that Kamala Harris knows this — this is a problem that ultimately has to be solved by Congress,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I believe we need to create a pathway to citizenship.”
“All of that is part of what we need to do for comprehensive immigration reform. Kamala Harris will work with Congress and get that done,” she went on.
There are at least 11 million illegal migrants currently living in the US.
Warren’s statement is a stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s policy on migrants who crossed into the US illegally. He has vowed to round up and deport them en mass.
The Massachusetts Democrat also dinged Trump over the failed border security agreement that went up in flames in the Senate earlier this year.
Warren, like many Democrats, accused him of torpedoing a border security package in order to preserve the issue for the election. Republicans who voted against it argued it was woefully insufficient.
“It’s really a question of, who do you trust on the border. Do you trust someone who has actually been a prosecutor, who has been there in a border state, who works with Congress toward a solution? Or do you trust someone who says, you know chaos is politically helpful to him,” Warren added.
Republicans have argued that the opposite is true and that Trump had a stronger record on border security than Harris. They’ve dubbed Harris the “border czar,” in a nod to Harris’ assignment from Biden to tackle the causes of migration from Central America.
The recently rebranded Harris for President campaign has sought to distance herself from that and stressed that she was never formally called the “border czar.”
Additionally, there has been a wave of migrants who have poured into the US, including asylum seekers — which has totaled an estimated 8 million under the Biden administration, per data from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The failed Senate deal on border security featured reforms to the asylum-seeking process, which both Democrats and Republicans have argued is being exploited by many of the migrants.
Both Trump and his running mate JD Vance, 39, have blasted Harris on immigration and border security. Vance recently alleged that Harris would try to whittle away measures that prevent noncitizens from voting in US elections.
“Worst of all, Kamala Harris would happily erode every protection we have to prevent them from voting,” Vance chided at a rally Saturday.
“She wants to hand over control of our country to people who shouldn’t be here in the first place. And we cannot let her.”
Warren was also adamant that a president’s ability to take unilateral action on immigration is limited.
“I really want to underscore what a president can do all by herself on immigration issues is quite limited, particularly when Congress will not authorize the resources needed,” she said.
