Screenshot: 60 Minutes/Youtube
Kamala Harris’s recent appearance on 60 Minutes took a tense turn when CBS host Bill Whitaker grilled her on her administration’s mishandling of illegal immigration—a crisis that has quadrupled under her watch.
Sitting down for what she might have expected to be a smooth interview with softball questions, Harris instead found herself repeatedly dodging Whitaker’s tough questions with evasive answers and word salad.
Harris’s evasive answers highlighted her struggles to address the border crisis and brought to light a record-breaking influx of illegal immigration under her watch.
According to the report from the Deputy Director of ICE Patrick Lechleitner sent to Congressman Tony Gonzalez, over 662,000 illegal immigrants with criminal histories are currently on ICE’s national docket.
Even more alarming is that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is currently tracking over 425,000 illegal immigrants convicted of various crimes, while 226,000 face pending criminal charges, all of whom have been released into the United States under the regime’s lenient immigration enforcement.
Of that staggering number, over 13,000 illegal immigrants have been convicted of homicide, and more than 15,000 have been convicted of sexual assault.
These individuals are not in custody—they are roaming free in communities across the country, thanks to the administration’s so-called “catch and release” policy.
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When asked why the administration waited so long to enact measures to curb the flow, Kamala fell back on rehearsed excuses, pointing fingers at former President Trump and Congress for failing to fix “a longstanding problem.”
She conveniently dodged Whitaker’s direct question, opting instead to rant about past failures and claim that their proposed solutions were stifled by political opponents.
Bill Whitaker: “You recently visited the southern border and– embraced President Biden’s recent crackdown on asylum seekers. And that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that’s the right answer now, why didn’t your administration take those steps in 2021?”
Kamala Harris: “The first bill we proposed to Congress was to fix our broken immigration system, knowing that if you want to actually fix it, we need Congress to act. It was not taken up. Fast forward to a moment when a bipartisan group of members of the United States Senate, including one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, got together, came up with the border security bill. Well, guess what happened? Donald Trump got word that this bill was afoot and could be passed and he wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem, so he told his buddies in Congress, ‘Kill the bill. Don’t let it move forward.'”
For context, the bill failed because it was essentially a poison pill.
According to Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL):
Why the Senate Border Deal FAILED:
1–Codify Catch/Release
2–Let in 1.8M Illegals
3–Fund Sanctuary Cities
4–Fund NGOs Moving Illegals
5–Lawyers to Illegals
6–Work Permits to Illegals
7–Nothing to Deport Illegals
8–No Immediate Wall Funds
9–Weak Asylum Screening
10–$60B to Ukraine
The resolution cites several concerns, notably Republican Senator Lankford’s collaboration with Senator Chuck Schumer on a deal allegedly permitting 5,000 illegal immigrants per day to enter and work in the United States. This figure translates to approximately 155,000 illegal immigrants each month, amounting to an annual total of 1.8 million.
In this bill, $1.4 billion from the budget for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to be transferred to the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program, to be awarded to NGOs for providing shelter and other services to illegal migrants.
Whitaker, however, wasn’t buying her excuses. He pressed Harris to address the actual numbers, which show border crossings nearly quadrupled since her administration took over.
Bill Whitaker: “But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?”
Kamala Harris: “It’s a longstanding problem. And solutions are at hand. And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.”
With each attempt to deflect, Harris seemed increasingly evasive, repeating the phrase “we need Congress to act” but providing little detail on how her administration’s actions differed from the “solutions” she claims to have been offering from day one. Whitaker, clearly unsatisfied, pointed out that while border arrivals might have decreased recently, the surge during her administration was historic.
Attempting to shift focus, Harris claimed that the administration’s policies had “cut the flow of illegal immigration by half” and reduced fentanyl influxes, an assertion many found questionable given recent record highs in fentanyl-related overdoses across the nation.
When Whitaker questioned why these measures hadn’t been implemented sooner, Harris circled back to calling for Congress’s intervention, never fully addressing the skyrocketing numbers or her administration’s apparent policy failures.
Kamala Harris: “The numbers today, because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half.”
Bill Whitaker: “But should you have done that?”
Kamala Harris: “We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half. But we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.”
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The post Border Czar Kamala Harris Stumbles Under Pressure as 60 Minutes Grills Her on Exploding Illegal Immigration – Evades the Question Three Times with Nonsensical Answers appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.