A county sheriff in California is “really upset” that Vice President Kamala Harris featured him in a recent campaign ad without first consulting him or getting his permission.
“In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff [Mike] Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the Sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said.
Boudreaux has served 37 years in the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and is now the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association. The video footage used in the political ad was filmed in 2013 in California’s Central Valley when Harris was the California attorney general.
The ad attempts to portray Harris, appointed ‘border czar’ by President Joe Biden, as a hawk, claiming that, “as Vice President, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades.”
That said, according to federal statistics, illegal crossings have regularly broken records under the Biden-Harris administration. She’s only visited the border once, and her attempts to deal with the “root causes” of illegal immigration resulted in a single trip to Central America, where many migrants came from.
For his part, Boudreaux called the day Harris visited in 2013 “smoke and mirrors.”
“We were in the green room. She never came in and said hello to any of us. She walked up front, gave her presser, literally walked out, never said hi to any of us,” said Boudreaux. “I’m disgusted because, you know, she didn’t shake hands. She didn’t say hello. And she’s taken credit for all this work that the locals did.”
“As Attorney General, Kamala Harris undercut efforts by California law enforcement officials to stop criminals from flooding our state with guns and drugs across the border,” the sheriff wrote.
“She repeatedly defunded and shuttered task forces designed to protect our residents, leaving the Valley and our state vulnerable,” he continued. “Kamala’s sad attempt to paint herself as tough on the border by implying my support – and the support of neighboring law enforcement leaders – is pathetic.”
Last month, the former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol union blasted Harris for failing miserably to address the causes of so much illegal immigration.
“It’s very disappointing,” Brandon Judd, who recently retired, told Fox News. “We gave her the policies that she needed to implement. She refused to implement those.”
Judd’s remarks coincide with heightened scrutiny of Harris’s immigration and border security record in the days following Biden’s announcement that he would not be running for president and would instead support his vice president to succeed him. Critics claim Harris has fallen short on the key campaign issue that could determine the outcome of the 2024 election.
In March 2021, the president appointed Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to address migration in response to critics who were already noting the surge in illegal border crossings shortly after Biden’s election.
Fox News added:
Later in 2021, Harris negotiated a memorandum of understanding with Mexico that saw the U.S. send $4 billion to help Central American countries address root causes of illegal migration, with private companies kicking in an extra investment of $5.2 billion to the cause.
But the vice president’s work on the issue quickly fizzled out, an NBC News report published Thursday revealed, noting that Harris visited Mexico in June 2021 to sign an agreement that resulted in $4 billion in direct assistance and $5.2 billion in private-public investment but has not visited the border or countries to its south since January 2022.
Since 2021, the Root Causes strategy has made no new commitments, the report notes.
