Harris toughens immigration rhetoric, promising to bring back bipartisan border bill and not opposing the wall

Vice President Kamala Harris has adopted a tougher approach on immigration and unauthorized crossings through the southern border ever since she took the helm of the Democratic party. These stances are just the latest examples of how Harris' has shifted her rhetoric as she tries to appeal to a broader audience.

In her speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, where she formally accepted the party's nomination, Harris briefly highlighted some of her plans to combat unauthorized crossings if she wins the White House, such as signing the bipartisan border security bill blocked in the Senate earlier this year.

"After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border," she said at the DNC. "I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that [Donald Trump] killed and I will sign it into law."

That bill sought to increase funding to the border to stop illegal crossings. Despite bipartisan support, the bill would die in the Senate after former President Donald Trump ordered his allies to vote against it, fearing it would help Democrats in the upcoming elections.

"I refuse to play politics with our security," Harris said in her acceptance speech.

The Vice President's views on the border is the latest example of Harris changing her positions as she embarks on her sprint to win the White House. Other changes include her positions supporting Medicare for all and banning fracking, which aides say she is now against, according to Axios.

Prior to becoming Vice President, Harris had expressed her opposition to building a border wall.

In 2019, first declaring her candidacy for the 2020 elections, Harris called the wall Trump's "medieval vanity project" that wasn't going to stop transnational gangs from entering the U.S. Similarly, in 2020, she wrote on Facebook that "Trump's border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won't make us any safer."

But as illegal immigration has increased in the past few years, and the issue becomes a political vulnerability for her campaign— being dubbed as "border czar" by her Republican detractors— she seems to be embracing her new ideas.

One Harris TV ad frames her time as California's attorney general as that of a "border state prosecutor," and includes images of the border wall. In another, her campaign highlights her support of boosting the number of Border Patrol agents.

Some lawmakers have started to react to Harris' new stances.

For instance, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., says he was surprised with Harris' new plans for the border.

"We never saw any vice president staff here... she was a Johnny-come-never," Lankford told Axios about Harris not being involved in the border bill negotiations.

"I know she's talking about it now, but she wasn't talking about it at all before," he continued.

Harris' new hardline immigration posture follows attacks from the Trump campaign, which has blamed her for a wave of illegal border crossings.

But beyond those stances, the campaign is also seeking to wrong-foot Trump by mocking him. In the latest episode, the campaign ridiculed the former president for threatening to pull out of a scheduled debate on ABC by posting interviews of his objections against the background noise of clucking chickens.