Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is retreating from her pledge to use executive authority to grant a pathway to citizenship to two million illegal immigrants, Axios reported Monday.
Harris's campaign declined this week to answer whether the vice president is still committed to the measures she supported during her 2020 presidential campaign. Those measures would provide green cards and a pathway to citizenship for two million "Dreamers," illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children, as well as protect over six million illegal immigrants from deportation.
The policy shift comes after Harris's team in recent weeks has already walked back her positions on several issues, including building a border wall, passing Medicare for All, taxing tips, and banning fracking. At the Democratic National Convention last month, Harris vowed to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars toward building a border wall, which she once derided as "un-American" and "a complete waste of taxpayer money [that] won't make us any safer."
The Axios report came the same day as a video resurfaced of Harris attending a 2018 protest in Los Angeles where she chanted, "Down down with deportation!"
During her 2020 campaign, Harris advocated granting work authorizations and using presidential powers to allow "Dreamers" to receive green cards, which would allow them to pursue citizenship. "Every day in the life of a Dreamer who fears deportation is a long day," Harris said at the time. "Dreamers cannot afford to sit around and wait for Congress to get its act together. Their lives are on the line."
Harris also pledged to expand "deferred action" programs that would protect more than six million illegal immigrants, such as the parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, from deportation, according to the Axios report.
Former president Donald Trump, Harris's Republican opponent, told an interviewer last month that Harris is "flip-flopping on everything that she's believed in for the last 20 years."
"In history, on occasion, somebody will go back on one major policy and they'll change," Trump said. "She's gone back on everything single thing she's ever said."