Vice President Kamala Harris mocked the idea that a border wall was necessary to keep terrorists from entering the country during a February 2019 interview in New Hampshire.

During the sit-down interview with WMUR-TV, then-Democratic California Sen. Harris mocked President Donald Trump’s assertion that a massive border wall between the U.S. and Mexico was necessary to keep terrorists from unlawfully crossing. However, after her election to the vice presidency, her administration oversaw a major increase in the number of suspected terrorists crossing into the U.S. from the southern border.

“It’s the height of irresponsibility,” Harris responded when asked what she would do if Trump were to move forward with plans to use Department of Defense funds to build more border wall. “For the Commander in Chief to suggest that we have to build a wall across our southern border because there are terrorists who are trying to invade the country, it couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

Harris referred to the wall as a “vanity project” for Trump and also asserted that the issue was a “crisis of the president’s own making.”

“We don’t need to build a wall,” she continued. “It is not an emergency.”

The number of terrorists caught attempting to unlawfully cross the border was near zero at the end of Trump’s first term, data from Customs and Border Protection show. However, the percentage of foreign nationals on the terror watch list attempting to illegally enter the U.S. grew over 2,500% under the Biden administration.

The issue of terrorism and an open border was highlighted last month when it was publicly revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested eight Tajik nationals who were suspected of having ties to ISIS.

All of the Tajik nationals had crossed into the U.S. through the southern border, according to NBC News. However, federal immigration officials were not able to properly vet the individuals, allowing them to ultimately enter the country.

In another example, Mohammad Kharwin, an illegal migrant from Afghanistan, was placed into a government monitoring program after crossing the southern border near San Ysidro, California, in 2023. Kharwin was almost immediately taken off the program, known as Alternatives to Detention, and able to roam free in the country for nearly a year until federal authorities discovered he had potential ties to Hezbo-e-Islmi, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Illegal immigration rose considerably under the Biden administration, with more than seven million illegal migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border since President Joe Biden took office, according to the latest Customs and Border Protection data. The rise in unlawful crossings has coincided with a large increase in the number of suspected terrorists arriving at U.S. borders.

Following Biden’s exit from the 2024 presidential election last weekend, Harris quickly established herself as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee based on a Democratic Party insider vote with almost no primary voter approval.