Kamala Harris suddenly knows how to “fix” the border crisis. A retired Border Patrol chief isn't buying it

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign is trying to cast her as a tough candidate on the border, but a former Border Patrol leader is warning the public not to buy it.

The Harris campaign has released a slate of ads claiming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would “fix the border” and crack down on illegal immigration by increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. But retired Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott, who led the agency while Harris served as “border czar,” says voters need to look at his record to understand how he would actually handle security border

“Look at the history and dive into the details,” Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It's smoke and mirrors.”

“Like the Senate bill, it supports more funding and more agents, but it's to speed up the processing and flow of more illegal aliens into the United States faster,” Scott said, referring to the now-dead Senate border deal that was overturned in the House earlier this year. “It's not border security.”

In a campaign announcement released in July, the Harris campaign claimed the vice president supports increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, supports new technology to block drugs from entering the US, and even blamed former President Donald Trump for not support the Senate border deal. The vice president doubled down on this approach with a new announcement this week that makes her a tough border state prosecutor and reiterated her promise to hire “thousands more” of border agents.

The new campaign trail seems at odds with her history as a US senator and vice president.

When he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Harris was among the majority of contenders who they raised their hands when asked if they supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings. As a senator, she once tried to compare Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the Ku Klux Klan and joined a slate of Senate Democrats in formally opposed then-President Donald Trump's efforts to increase the number of Border Patrol agents on the ground.

NumbersUSA, a group that supports tougher immigration policy, gave his Senate run a Classification F for his support of a series of bills that the organization says would have weakened border security and further encouraged illegal immigration.

Scott served as head of the Border Patrol from roughly the last year of the Trump administration through the first seven months of the Biden-Harris administration, which overlapped with Harris' mandate to address the root causes of illegal immigration from Central America. The retired boss confirmed to the DCNF that Harris never spoke to him, even after his special designation as “frontier czar.”

“'I support more funding for more officers,'” Scott said, mocking Harris' new ads. “Well, what are you going to do with them?”

“She supports more funding to speed up processing, not to patrol the border and improve technology at the border,” he explained. “When you dive in and look at his platform and everything he's said, it's very, very consistent.”

The retired chief noted that the Biden-Harris administration “redirected millions and millions” from Border Patrol enforcement operations and other Customs and Border Protection (CBP) resources to prosecute more illegal migrants in the country. He also faulted the administration for redirecting large taxpayer resources to NGOs so they could take illegal migrants “wherever they want to go” instead of prioritizing enforcement.

“Border security prevents people from coming into our home without going through this front door, which is a port of entry,” Scott said. “It's enforcing the law, not finding ways to fix it.”

Harris' recent push to be seen as a border hawk also comes after he selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as his running mate, a Democrat who has a history of left actions on illegal immigration.

As governor, Walz signed legislation allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses and signed bills that provided undocumented migrants with state-funded health care and free college tuition. During his 2018 run for governor, he publicly stated his support for making Minnesota a sanctuary state, which would largely prohibit state and local law enforcement officials from working with ICE agents to apprehend criminal aliens .

Walz has also opposed border security measures. As a congressman, he once called Trump's border wall “ridiculous” and more joked recently that he would invest in a stair factory regarding a border wall.

If recent polls are accurate, the Harris campaign will face obstacles in reshaping its border security image. A Hard-Harris survey released late last month revealed that 69 percent of voters believe the vice president favors “open borders,” including a clear majority of Democratic voters.

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/CSPAN)

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