Kamala Harris, once California’s attorney general, holds an infamous reputation for prioritizing the fight against traffickers of drugs and humans. This is an aspect of her resume she often selectively ignores. Supporters and accomplices of Vice President Harris have often presumed her previous experience combating border crime gives insight into her current approach to the southern border threat. However, Kamala Harris’s ludicrous pledge to suppress illegal immigration at the nation’s border, using her debatable experience as California’s attorney general as her shield, raises countless questions to her credibility.
When asked about her tenure in California’s rule, she casually mentioned that she was the top law enforcement officer of California, a border state, and voraciously fought against transnational criminal organizations. However, her accusations are being tested by both Democrats and social justice crusaders. Unsurprisingly, as it turns out, she is no longer eager to affirm her previous tactics, indicating a lack of confidence in her own strategies.
Her strategy shift to tackle transnational crime, both in her candidacy for California’s attorney general in 2010 and during her six-year tenure, leaves one pondering over its effectiveness. She redefined how law enforcement agencies fought criminal activities along interstate boundaries, drawing together federal administrators and state attorneys general to devise strategies and organize multiagency operations. However, her attempts seemed to be just running in circles rather than making a significant impact.
With a decade-long experience as the chief of staff to district attorneys in San Francisco, Cristine Soto DeBerry admitted that before Harris took charge, they wrestled with scarce resources and hardly shared case-related information. Noteworthy was their focus on nabbing petty dealers who were quickly replaced, leaving them at the mercy of large scale criminal organizations linked to Latin America and Asia. This begs us to ask, did Harris’s reign change this set-up for the better or just set a smokescreen veiling her ineffective crime-fighting strategies?
Among Harris’s purported successful cases are her supposed takedowns of cocaine and methamphetamine networks associated with the Sinaloa and Guadalajara cartels, a heroin trafficking gang in the Bay Area connected to other Mexican criminal groups, and a drug trafficking operation that reportedly pushed opioids with fatal consequences. Still, one cannot avoid wondering about the validity and impact of these victories, in light of Harris’s selective reporting and contradiction-ridden performance.
Harris seems to be leaning into this questionable experience as she runs on an absurdly rigid border and immigration platform. She promises to double the resources for the Justice Department to extradite and prosecute members of transnational crime rings, pursue harsher criminal charges against repeat illegal border crossers, and inject more funding into border staff and surveillance. Despite these grandiose claims, the question remains: Can she deliver?
Simultaneously, Harris is promising to make citizenship, asylum, and other forms of legal status faster and more accessible for immigrants whom she categorizes as compliant and industrious. Observers following her career voice concerns about her attempts to swing between apparent harshness and compassion, raising more doubts about her intended approach toward criminal justice.
Michael A. Ramos, a Republican ex-district attorney in San Bernardino County, credited Harris for inspiring him and many others to move away from incarcerating young women and girls involved in the sex trade. However, the crux of the issue, as Ramos paraphrased Harris’s view that enforcement alone wouldn’t solve the border crisis, throws light on the flawed premise of her border security stance.
The Trump campaign and Republican allies slam Harris’s record, arguing that her soft approach toward nonviolent defendants led to the release of potentially harmful undocumented immigrants. Conversely, Democrats and immigrant rights attorneys worry that Harris has swung too far right, potentially leading to future policy battles within her party. Her track record in the fight against fentanyl and transnational crime has been met with criticism over the tactics she relied on, which have been accused of leading to racial profiling and violating civil rights.
Harris offered her support to a highly controversial tool during her tenure as attorney general – mobile phone surveillance tracking technology that law enforcement used to scan hundreds of messages and call logs. Although it was stated that officers required warrants, no written policy was provided, raising alarm bells over possible privacy invasions. Harris’s support for this tool reveals her willingness to prioritize perceived security over proven civil liberty concerns.
In the same vein, Harris also backed a 2015 bill allowing California law enforcement to seize private property prior to filing criminal charges. She justified this under the guise of preventing transnational gangs from liquidating assets. This procedure, known as civil asset forfeiture, was condemned by both civil rights activists and libertarians for its civil liberties violations.
Reports by the American Civil Liberties Union of California and the Drug Policy Alliance argued asset forfeiture was discriminatorily targeting low-income people of color, seizing their property without substantiated evidence of wrongdoing. Theshia Naidoo, the managing director of advocacy and U.S. foreign policy at the Drug Policy Alliance, pointed out that the bill was against civil liberties and racial justice principles.
Despite the possibility of the bill causing more work for trial courts, a fiscal analysis revealed this was not put to a vote. The following year witnessed a shift in the political tide as the state legislature reversed course and restricted civil asset forfeiture. This reversal again underscores Harris’s short-sighted and questionable support of a practice eventually rejected as flawed and unjust.