Kamala Harris Says Her ‘Values Have Not Changed’ as Her Campaign Staff Says She Changed Her Position on Illegal Immigration

Vice President Kamala Harris says her “values have not changed” just as spokespeople for her presidential campaign claim she is changing positions on illegal immigration.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview published on Thursday.

At the same time, a spokesperson for Harris’s presidential campaign told Fox News that the vice president has changed her position on several immigration policies that she once campaigned on as a Democrat presidential primary candidate in 2020.

In particular, the spokesperson claims Harris no longer supports decriminalizing illegal immigration, saying she believes “unauthorized border crossings are illegal.” In 2019, Harris said she supported a plan that Democrat Julián Castro routinely touted that sought to make crossing the southern border a mere civil offense.

Similarly, the spokesperson claims Harris does not support closing most of the nation’s immigration detention centers. In 2019, Harris said she backed shuttering immigration detention facilities operated by private contractors who work with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The spokesperson claims Harris now wants “to ensure sufficient resources to enforce our laws and prioritize detention and removal for individuals who pose threats to public safety and national security, as well as ensure compliance with immigration proceedings and decisions, including removal.”

Also, the spokesperson claims Harris no longer wants to “reexamine” the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is tasked with enforcing federal immigration law, including arresting and deporting illegal aliens.

In 2018, during the rise of the “Abolish ICE” movement, Harris questioned ICE’s role:

I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing, and we need to probably think about starting from scratch because there’s a lot that is wrong with the way that it is conducting itself, and we need to deal with that. [Emphasis added]

Now, the Harris spokesperson claims she actually supports funding ICE. Harris, herself, has not made any of these statements or clarified that her positions on immigration have changed.

The campaign’s seeking to reverse course on major policy positions comes just as Harris has started featuring former President Donald Trump’s border wall in her ad campaigns, portraying her as a hardline defender of the nation’s borders.

For years, Harris herself has mocked building a border wall as “un-American” and a “medieval vanity project.” In 2019, Harris said, “We don’t need to build a wall.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow him on Twitter here.