What a Kamala Harris Win Would Mean for Immigration

If elected, Vice President Kamala Harris said she would push Congress to pass the border security bill Republicans and Democrats drafted earlier this year. That failed deal has become the centerpiece of Harris’ campaign promises on immigration and provides a window into Harris’ likely approach to immigration as President.

The bipartisan bill would have added thousands of Border Patrol and other immigration personnel, sped up immigration decisions, and made it harder to claim asylum in the U.S. The bill was supported by the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents border agents. But the effort died when Donald Trump publicly pressured Republicans to back out of the deal, calling it a “death wish” for the GOP.

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During Biden’s first three years in office, the Border Patrol apprehended about 2 million people per year on average trying to enter the U.S. between border crossings. Illegal crossings on the U.S. border fell this summer after the Biden Administration added caps on asylum during periods of elevated illegal border crossings.

Voters consistently ranked immigration as one of their top issues in the 2024 election. For months, polling showed the issue was a weak spot for Harris. Trump has labeled Harris as the “border czar,” trying to blame her for the country’s immigration challenges and overstating her diplomatic task as Vice President to reduce the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. 

Since becoming the party’s nominee, Harris has tacked to the center on border security. At campaign events and in ads and interviews, she has emphasized her work as a prosecutor in California bringing cases against transnational crime syndicates and human traffickers.

Here’s what to know about Harris’ immigration plan if she were to win the presidential election.

More Border Patrol agents

Harris supports adding more Border Patrol agents. In February, Republicans and Democrats in Congress had agreed on a border security deal that would have added 1,500 more agents and immigration personnel and expanded the roster of immigration judges and asylum officers. Harris has repeatedly said she would press Congress to pass that bill if she becomes President.

The deal would also expand immigration detention. Harris supports provisions in the border bill that would add more immigration detention beds, bringing the current total from 34,000 beds to about 50,000 beds. That means more people held by immigration officials while their deportation cases are heard in court.

More asylum officers and immigration judges

Harris has also supported provisions in the bill aimed at staffing up the officials who determine who is allowed to stay in the U.S. The deal would add 4,300 new asylum officers to speed up decisions on who gets asylum protection and who doesn’t qualify. Doing so would likely reduce delays and make it faster to remove those who don’t qualify. Harris has also proposed opening up more offices overseas where people can make asylum claims.

“It can take years for asylum claims to be decided,” Harris said in September while campaigning in Douglas, Ariz. “Well, this is a problem we can solve, including by hiring more asylum officers and expanding processing centers in people’s home countries.”

Harris also supports adding 100 more immigration court judges and associated support staff to address the backlog in immigration cases that has extended the amount of time people are waiting in the U.S. to hear about a deportation decision. Those changes would require additional funding from Congress, and Harris would need to convince Republican lawmakers to follow through on the compromise deal they made earlier this year.

A higher bar for asylum claims

As Vice President, Harris supported capping new asylum claims when illegal border crossings spiked over 2,500 per day, as a way to deter migrants from appearing at the border. Harris also supported tougher provisions in the bipartisan border deal that would have increased the requirements for people seeking asylum in the U.S. Asylum seekers would have to show that there was no safe place for them to avoid persecution in their home country, including moving to a different town.

Harris also supported provisions in the bill that made it easier to deport asylum seekers who don’t meet the required standards for protection. Under the plan, new asylum seekers would be placed either into expedited removal or a six-month process conducted by asylum officers outside the immigration court system called “protection determination.”

Expand legal pathways for immigrants

Campaigning in Douglas, Ariz. in September, Harris said that the country doesn’t have to choose between securing the border and making the immigration system more orderly and humane. “We can and we must do both,” Harris said. “We need clear, legal pathways for people seeking to come into our country, and we must make our current system work better.”

Harris supports adding 250,000 family and employment-based visas over five years, provisions that were in the bipartisan border deal she’s pledged to resurrect.

She has also promised to go farther. She vowed that as President she would work to create an earned pathway to citizenship for Americans in the country without authorization. “I will work with Congress to create, at long last, a pathway to citizenship for hardworking immigrants who have been here for years, for years, and deserve to have a system that works,” Harris said in Arizona in September.