'60 Minutes' asks Harris whether it was a 'mistake' for Biden admin to go soft on border, VP repeatedly dodges

Vice President Kamala Harris was pressed by CBS News' Bill Whitaker astir whether it was a "mistake" for the Biden medication to spell brushed connected its borderline policies during a tense speech connected Monday's peculiar predetermination occurrence of "60 Minutes."

"You precocious visited the confederate borderline and embraced President Biden's caller crackdown connected asylum seekers, and that crackdown produced an astir contiguous and melodramatic alteration successful the fig of borderline crossings," Whitaker said. "If that's the close reply now, wherefore didn't your medication instrumentality those steps successful 2021?"

"The archetypal measure we projected to Congress was to hole our breached migration system, knowing that if you privation to really hole it, we request Congress to act. It was not taken up," Harris responded. "Fast guardant to a infinitesimal erstwhile a bipartisan radical of members of the United States Senate, including 1 of the astir blimpish members of the United States Senate, got together, came up with a borderline information bill. 

"Well, conjecture what happened? Donald Trump got connection that this measure was afoot and could beryllium passed, and helium wants to tally connected a occupation alternatively of fixing a problem. So helium told his buddies successful Congress, 'Kill the bill, don't fto it determination forward.'"

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Vice President Kamala Harris was grilled astir wherefore the Biden medication allowed a "flood" of migrants to travel successful from the confederate borderline during an interrogation connected "60 Minutes." (Screenshot/CBS News)

"I've been covering the borderline for years, and truthful I cognize this is not a occupation that started with your administration," Whitaker said. "But determination was an historical flood of undocumented immigrants coming crossed the borderline the archetypal 3 years of your administration. As a substance of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the past twelvemonth of President Trump."

"Was it a mistake to loosen the migration policies arsenic overmuch arsenic you did?" Whitaker past asked. 

"It's a long-standing problem, and solutions are astatine hand, and from time one, literally, we person been offering solutions," Harris responded. 

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Vice President Kamala Harris has been criticized for her abrupt clasp of a pugnacious borderline stance aft record-high borderline crossings nether the Biden administration. (REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images)

"What I was asking was, was it a mistake to benignant of let that flood to hap successful the archetypal place?" the seasoned CBS News writer pressed. 

"I deliberation the policies that we person been proposing are astir fixing a problem, not promoting a problem, okay," Harris responded. 

"But the numbers did quadruple nether your watch," Whitaker interjected. 

"And the numbers contiguous due to the fact that of what we person done, we person chopped the travel of amerciable migration by half," Harris continued, arsenic Whitaker attempted to inquire the question a 3rd time. "We person chopped the travel of fentanyl by half, but we request Congress to beryllium capable to act, to really hole the problem."

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Veteran CBS News analogous Bill Whitaker repeatedly asked Harris whether it was a "mistake" for her medication to person loosened borderline policies astatine the opening of the Biden presidency. (Screenshot/CBS News)

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