A newly resurfaced video from 2018 has Vice President Kamala Harris back in the spotlight, exposing a controversial flip-flop on a key issue. The clip shows Harris, then a senator from California, chanting “down, down with deportation” at the 33rd annual Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Los Angeles. At the time, she was the parade’s grand marshal and marching alongside now-disgraced actor Jussie Smollett, who later faked a hate crime.
The protest Harris participated in was a blend of various causes, with the #TimesUp movement and other social justice issues taking center stage. However, it’s Harris’s specific call to end deportations that stands out. In the video, she passionately pumps her fist, leading the chant: “Down, down with deportation! Up, up with education!”
The moment raises concerns as Harris’s position on immigration has been under scrutiny due to her role as the Biden administration’s “Border Czar.” Tasked with addressing the crisis at the southern border since 2021, Harris has faced fierce criticism for her failure to secure it, with an estimated 15 million illegal immigrants entering the country under her watch.
Despite the footage being from six years ago, Harris continued to echo similar rhetoric in more recent appearances. During an event on immigration reform, she pledged to close all detention centers holding criminal illegal immigrants “on day one” if given more authority. Her commitment to dismantling immigration enforcement has been a cornerstone of her progressive platform, but it’s also been a point of contention among critics who question her ability to manage the ongoing crisis at the border.
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Her performance as Border Czar has been widely panned by Republicans, who argue that her approach has been too soft. As the crisis continues to grow, with record numbers of illegal crossings, the resurfaced video adds more fuel to the fire for those accusing her of hypocrisy.
At the time of the 2018 parade, Harris’s stance on immigration may have seemed consistent with her progressive image. If elected president, Harris has claimed she’ll pour hundreds of millions into building the southern border wall — a project she once denounced as “un-American” during the Trump administration. This has been the latest flip-flop from Harris, who previously backed far-left policies.
When Harris first ran for president in 2019, she labeled Trump’s border wall a “medieval vanity project,” claiming it wouldn’t stop transnational gangs from crossing into the U.S. Just months later, in February 2020, she took to Facebook to call the wall a “complete waste of taxpayer money” that wouldn’t make Americans any safer.
Her opposition goes back even further — in April 2017, shortly after entering the Senate, Harris declared the wall a “stupid use of money” and vowed to block any funding for it. Now, with her political ambitions on the line and Trump’s border policies proving effective, Harris seems to be reversing course, embracing the very project she once ridiculed.
As Trump’s campaign ramps up its attacks on her weak border record, Harris has suddenly shifted to a tougher stance on immigration. However, she still can’t escape the glaring differences with Trump’s proven approach. Harris remains opposed to family separation and mass deportations, signaling that her tough talk may just be another empty political pivot.
