Vice President Kamala Harris is receiving criticism from a top Democratic lawmaker for her comments about the status of the U.S.-Mexico border.
During an interview on “Meet the Press” Sunday, Harris claimed that the U.S. southern border is “secure.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) commented on Harris’ claim during an appearance on Fox News.
“It’s wrong. She’s dead wrong on that. And I have said this,” Manchin explained.
He added, “If we don’t secure it — I voted every time for the wall. But we need the wall and a lot more, technology, more agents.”
Manchin suggested the “2013 immigration bill was still the best piece of legislation I think that we have ever had before us. We couldn’t get it passed through the Republican House at that time because of some politics involved there.”
He continued, “And they — the amnesty, people were shouting the word amnesty.”
According to Manchin, “That piece of legislation would have corrected everything we have going wrong. But, for anybody, the vice president, president, anybody, to say our borders are secured, that is not accurate. I have been there. It’s wrong.”
Watch Manchin’s comments below:
.@BretBaier: "Vice President Harris said this weekend the southern border is 'secure.'"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 13, 2022
Manchin: "It's wrong. She's dead wrong on that." pic.twitter.com/O2IIJsNu0E
Harris also acknowledged during her interview that the U.S. has “a broken immigration system, in particular, over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.”
Host Chuck Todd did not let Harris off the hook that easy.
He asked, “We’re going to have two million people cross this border for the first time ever. You’re confident this border’s secure?”
She replied, “We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration.”
The vice president added, “But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years. We also have to put into place a law and a plan for a pathway for citizenship for the millions of people who are here and are prepared to do what is legally required to gain citizenship.”
Harris told Todd “we don’t have that in place because people are playing politics in a state like this and in Congress.”
She continued, “By the way, you want to talk about bipartisanship on an issue that at one time was a bipartisan issue both in terms of Republican senators and even presidents.”
Earlier this month, CNN reported that close to 750 migrants have lost their lives at the southern border this fiscal year.
Additionally, Border Patrol made more than 181,000 arrests at the border in July, as the outlet noted.
