‘We did the right thing’: Kamala Harris pressed on administration’s record on immigration

Kamala Harris at a town hall on Wednesday found herself vigorously defending the Biden administration’s immigration record from a CNN host’s repeated grilling on the timing of the executive actions taken this year.

The moment came after a Drexel University student’s question about immigration, which Harris answered by saying: “America’s immigration system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. And it’s been broken for a long time.”

“As my opponent has proven himself, he would prefer to run on the problem instead of fix the problem,” she said, adding that Trump killed a bipartisan border security bill that stalled in Congress earlier this year that “would’ve done a lot of good."

That’s when Anderson Cooper jumped in and grilled Harris on the “record border crossings” in 2022 and 2023 despite the administration’s many executive actions.

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“Finally in 2024, just in June, three weeks before the first presidential debate with Joe Biden you instituted executive actions that had a dramatic impact – really shut down people crossing over – why didn’t your administration do that in 2022, 2023?”

Harris seized the moment to tout the reduced “flow of immigration” she said had been cut “by over half” before Cooper tried to jump in.

“But if it was that easy…” Cooper said.

“Hold on let me finish,” Harris quickly replied before briefly pausing to give Cooper time to finish his original question – “…but if it was that easy with that executive action, why not do it in 2022, 2023?” Cooper said.

“Here’s the thing, we have to understand that ultimately this problem is going to be fixed through congressional action. Congress has the authority and the purse – I hate to use D.C. terms – but literally they write the checks.”

She tried to end the exchange by reminding the crowd that at that present moment, “We have lower undocumented immigrants and illegal immigration than Trump when he left office.”

Cooper again pushed back: “Do you wish you’d done those executive orders in 2022, 2023?”

“I think we did the right thing,” she said before adding: “I pledge to you that I will work across the aisle to fix this long-standing problem.”

Watch the clip below or at this link.