Claim that Harris flip-flopped on border wall stance is misleading

Immigration is one of the leading issues of the upcoming presidential election as large amounts of migrants continue to attempt to cross the southern U.S. border, even after those numbers dropped from their record highs late last year.

Republicans have recently criticized Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she “flip-flopped” on the Trump-era border wall initiative, and that she now supports building a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border after previously criticizing it. 

Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) published a press release on Aug. 30 that says Harris’ “new pledge to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to continue the Trump-era border security wall” is “one of the biggest political flip-flops in recent American history.” Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, retweeted a story accusing Harris of flip-flopping her stance on the wall and added that the Vice President could “start right now” if she wants to build the wall.

Trump championed the wall during his presidency, during which the government constructed over 400 miles of new border barriers. Democrats, including Harris, have long criticized Trump’s border wall construction project.

THE QUESTION

Does Harris now support building Trump’s border wall?

THE ANSWER

Harris has not said she supports building Trump’s border wall. Harris has expressed her support for a bipartisan border security package that Congress failed to pass earlier this year. That bill, which is a compromise between Republican and Democratic legislators, includes previously allocated border wall funding that is unspent to continue to be used for building a wall at the border.

WHAT WE FOUND

Vice President Kamala Harris supports a bipartisan border security deal that includes border wall funding which was previously set aside for it and has yet to be spent. The bill stalled in the Senate and has yet to pass as a result.

However, the wall funding is just one part of a bill that includes many different border security measures and immigration reforms, some of which are Republican priorities and others of which are Democratic priorities.

The bill, titled Border Act of 2024, was negotiated by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and James Lankford (R-OK) in May. The bill was designed to be a compromise, giving each party some of what they wanted but not everything.

For example, Democrats got funding for more immigration judges and asylum officers to sort through asylum cases faster, as well as more funding to support people whose asylum claims have been granted, while Republicans got increases in ICE funding and Border Patrol agents for greater immigration enforcement.

Section 205 of the Border Act of 2024 requires that the “remaining unobligated balances” of funds allocated to the construction of border barriers in the last two budget bills of Trump’s presidency be reallocated to border barrier construction. Reallocating the funds extends the timeline in which the funds can be used and applies more restrictions to ensure the funds can only go to barrier construction. This section does not allocate any additional funding to building or maintaining a border wall.

According to a summary of the bill released by Lankford, $650 million is being reallocated for border wall construction.

The claim that Harris now supports Trump’s border wall appears to come from an Axios article that says in the headline that the Vice President has “flip-flopped” her position on building the wall. 

Other news stories and opinion pieces about Harris’ border wall position reference the Axios article, and JD Vance quote-tweeted Axios when he weighed in on the subject.

Axios was referring to Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which she said she would sign the bipartisan border security bill if it made it to her desk as president.

The Harris campaign told Axios that “the border deal is a whole lot more than continuation of wall funding” and that her advisers say the bill “didn’t include any new money to continue building the wall.”

Harris did not say she supported the border wall in her DNC speech, and she has not publicly supported the border wall or its continued construction at any other time.