As California’s junior senator, Kamala Harris promoted fundraisers for groups that support defunding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, records show.
In 2018 and 2019, Harris urged the public to pledge donations to at least two fundraisers spearheaded by left-wing immigration groups that have demanded ICE and CBP be abolished in recent years, social media posts show. The campaigns are still active on ActBlue, the top Democratic fundraising platform, the Washington Examiner confirmed.
Harris’s willingness to boost the anti-police activists could come back to haunt the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee on the campaign trail. President Joe Biden tapped Harris in 2021 to address the “root causes” of migration at the southern border. Harris and her allies sought to distance the vice president from her “border czar” moniker as illegal crossings surged to historic levels during the Biden-Harris administration.
As a senator, Harris said in 2018 that ICE should be reassessed “from scratch.” She introduced a bill in the upper chamber in 2019 that would have stripped $220 million from a division under ICE responsible for arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants — a fact that Republicans are highlighting ahead of the November election.
“Many of you have asked how you can help the families being impacted by our government’s human rights abuses along the border. Here’s what you can do right now: make a donation to groups providing support to meet the most urgent needs of these families,” Harris posted on social media in June 2018, along with a link to an ActBlue fundraiser said to benefit illegal immigrant families previously separated by ICE.
One group behind the fundraiser, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, posted a poem on social media in 2023 saying, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. You and me could Defund DHS, ICE, and CBP too!”
Another, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, is part of a left-wing coalition pressing to defund local sheriffs to build “more safe and just communities across the country.”
Other groups helping to lead the Harris-promoted fundraiser that have pushed to defund law enforcement include the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, La Union del Pueblo Entero, United We Dream Action, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The second Harris-promoted fundraiser has split donations between several groups, including the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the UndocuBlack Network.
That fundraiser is “providing direct support to immigrants on the border,” according to the ActBlue page.
“Yes, the UndocuBlack Network still supports defunding ICE and CBP,” Patrice Lawrence, the executive director of the UndocuBlack Network, told the Washington Examiner. “We think it is critical to protect immigrants here and recently arrived and we still today see bad practices from these agencies that don’t show care or compassion for us.”
The UndocuBlack Network calls itself “a multigenerational network of currently and formerly undocumented Black people that fosters community, facilitates access to resources, and contributes to transforming the realities of our people, so we are thriving and living our fullest lives.”
The UndocuBlack Network says on social media that it is based in Washington, D.C.
The Texas Civil Rights Project, which is based in Austin, Texas, and is also listed as part of the fundraiser, has said it is necessary to defund police because officers don’t “keep our communities safe.”
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The Harris campaign did not reply to a request for comment.
Harris leads former President Donald Trump by 1.5% in the 2024 race, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
