Kamala Harris sticks to script on migrants, dodges border questions on 60 Minutes, The View

Vice President Kamala Harris largely kept to her talking points on the ongoing border crisis during her recent media blitz, blaming Congress for the situation while simultaneously crediting belated executive action for reducing the flow of illegal immigrants.“It’s a longstanding problem.And solutions are at hand,” the Democratic nominee told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Monday.

“And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.”Upon taking office on Jan.20, 2021, the Harris-Biden administration reversed several of former President Donald Trump’s restrictive border policies and quickly saw a surge in illegal crossings.CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker told Harris that “I know this is not a problem that started with your administration.”“But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,” he added.

“As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump.”After Harris insisted the administration had been “offering solutions,” Whitaker responded: “What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?”“I think– the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem, OK?” the veep responded.“But the–“But the numbers did quadruple under your watch,” Whitaker repeated before the interview descended into crosstalk.“We have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half,” Harris insisted as Whitaker tried to ask his question again.

“But we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.”Early on in his White House tenure, President Biden put a pause on certain deportations, scrapped Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, and halted construction of the US-Mexico border wall.Since then, more than 8 million migrant encounters at the southern border have been recorded, according to data from U...