Kamala Harris fact-check interview on Fox News

In an often contentious and sometimes difficult exchange, Vice President Kamala Harris went on Fox News and answered questions from chief political anchor Bret Baier about immigration, the economy and her policy differences with her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump Trump, and his boss, President Joe Biden.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, gave her first Fox News interview on Oct. 16 as part of her campaign interview blitz at home.

Baier sometimes went back and forth with Harris on issues that Trump has called his weaknesses, particularly border policy. Baier asked Harris how many migrants had been released into the country under the Biden-Harris administration, how he would reduce the count and why some of his stances had changed since his 2019 presidential campaign. He asked Harris if immigrants illegals in the U.S. should qualify for driver’s licenses, free tuition or health care, saying his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had passed laws that did so.

Related:12 fact-checks from Donald Trump’s all-female Fox News town hall

Harris, for his part, said Trump was unfit to serve and said many of his former advisers had said the same. He also said that his plans would weaken the economy, but that his would strengthen it.

Harris also made it clear that his path would be different from Biden’s.

“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” he said. “And like every new president who comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences and fresh new ideas.”

We’ve fact-checked several of Harris’ claims (and some of what Baier said).

immigration

Harris said the border security bill would have hired 1,500 border agents

Harris said the border security bill, introduced in February by a bipartisan group of senators, “would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border.”

The bill, which failed twice in the Senate, would have given the Department of Homeland Security billions of dollars for immigration and border security measures. Specifically, the bill would have given US Customs and Border Protection $584 million to hire more personnel and $139 million to overtime the US Border Patrol. It would also have allowed the department to hire people more quickly.

A White House fact sheet said the bill would have added “more than 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel.”

Harris said he does not support decriminalizing illegal border crossings

Moving on from comments he made years ago, Harris said he does not support decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

“I do not believe in the decriminalization of border crossings, and I have not done so as vice president. I will not do that as president,” Harris said.

In 2017, Harris said “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal” while discussing Trump’s immigration actions, including an executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days

Being in the US without documentation is a civil offense, not a criminal one; crossing the US border illegally is a criminal violation.

In 2019, when he was running for president, Harris raised his hand at a Democratic presidential debate when a moderator asked the candidates whether they thought crossing the border without documentation should be a civil offense, not a criminal one. The conversation about decriminalizing illegal immigration at the time revolved around Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that led to the separation of children and parents arriving together at US borders.

Harris is right that the Border Patrol union passed the bipartisan border security bill

In February, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a border security bill that would have given more funding to immigration officials and changed the way asylum is decided for people arriving at the southwest border of the united states

Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., James Lankford, R-Okla. and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. co-sponsored the bill.

The National Border Patrol Council, the US Border Patrol union, endorsed the bill. The Border Patrol union endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign on October 13.

Baier said the border bill would have allowed 1.8 million immigrants a year. Was he right?

The Senate’s failed bipartisan border security bill would have given the executive branch emergency authority to bar most migrants from seeking asylum if unauthorized immigration at the border reached an average of 5,000 encounters a day during seven consecutive days. Encounter data tracks how many times officials detain migrants, not how many they let them in.

Over the course of a year, the bill “would have allowed 1.8 million illegal immigrants into the country,” Baier said.

But that’s inaccurate, immigration experts have said.

The number of encounters triggers the emergency authority, and the authority changes what happens when people try to cross the border. But the bill does not say that a certain number of people can cross the border illegally.

Before the emergency authority is activated, immigration law would continue to be enforced with a higher standard for asylum interviews, a faster adjudication process and larger detention space.

Walz signed laws to make immigrants eligible for driver’s licenses, tuition scholarships, health care

Asking Harris about his past positions, Baier said that in 2019 he supported “allowing immigrants in the country to apply illegally for driver’s licenses, to get free college tuition, to be enrolled in assistance free healthcare”. He added that his presidential running mate, Walz, “signed these things into state law.”

It’s true Walz signed a bill in 2023 that allows Minnesotans, regardless of immigration status, to apply for a license or ID card. To obtain a license, individuals must meet certain requirements. Walz said the bill would make the roads safer by ensuring drivers in the state are licensed and have insurance.

Walz signed another bill that created a scholarship program to cover tuition costs at Minnesota public colleges and universities for students whose household income is less than $80,000 a year. Students who are in the US illegally can apply if they have attended a Minnesota school for at least three years and graduated or received a GED certificate in Minnesota.

Walz also signed legislation that allows immigrants who are in the country illegally to enroll in MinnesotaCare, the state’s publicly subsidized health insurance program for low-income residents. MinnesotaCare enrollees pay premiums, set based on household size and income. There are also cost-sharing requirements, such as copayments and deductibles.

Economy

The Nobel laureates described Harris’s economic agenda as “superior” to Trump’s

Harris said 16 Nobel laureates indicated his economic plan would “strengthen our economy, (Trump’s) weaken them, ignite inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year.” This is mostly true.

Harris correctly describes what the Nobel laureates said about inflation during Trump’s presidency: “There is a reasonable concern that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation.” But while the group describes Harris’ agenda as “far superior” to Trump’s, his letter does not specifically predict a recession by mid-2025.

Rather, the group wrote: “We believe a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the US economic position in the world and a destabilizing effect on the US domestic economy.”

The 16 economists are George Akerlof, Angus Deaton, Claudia Goldin, Oliver Hart, Eric S. Maskin, Daniel L. McFadden, Paul R. Milgrom, Roger B. Myerson, Edmund S. Phelps, Paul M. Romer, Alvin E. Roth . , William F. Sharp, Robert J. Shiller, Christopher A. Sims, Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert B. Wilson.

foreign policy

Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018

When Baier pressed Harris not to rein in Iran, Harris said it was “Donald Trump who backed out of a deal that would have really brought Iran under control.”

In May 2018, Trump said the US would pull out of a nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions on Tehran, saying the Obama-era deal failed to contain the regime’s nuclear ambitions and would thwart the its regional meddling.

The withdrawal advanced Trump’s campaign promise to shake up the 2015 accord, which had originally been joined by six additional world powers. Under the deal, Iran scaled back its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions. Foreign policy experts said the deal reduced Iran’s nuclear capabilities and ensured that, in a worst-case scenario, the country would proliferate from a lower baseline.

But Trump had denounced the deal as a narrow and short-sighted advantage for Tehran, and has been irritated by its failure to address Iran’s missile program or military activity in the Middle East.

LGBTQ+ issues

What we know about Harris’s support for gender-affirming care for prisoners

Baier asked Harris if he supports “using taxpayer dollars to help prisoners or detained illegal aliens transition to another gender?”

Harris said, “I’m going to follow the law. And it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed.”

Harris was referring to an Oct. 16 New York Times story detailing that under Trump, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons “provided a range of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, to to a small group of inmates.”

The story was notable because Trump’s campaign has focused on Harris’ support for such procedures for transgender inmates. She wrote in a 2019 American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire: “I support policies that ensure that federal prisoners and detainees can get the medical care they need for gender transition, including surgical care, while are imprisoned or detained.”

The New York Times reported that Bureau of Prisons officials in 2018 wrote that under federal law, it was required to pay for inmate surgeries if they were deemed medically necessary. In 2019, federal inmate Cristina Nichole Iglesias sued the office after she said it denied her gender-affirming care.

In 2022, Iglesias settled the case, becoming the second person in federal custody to receive gender-affirmation surgery.

For Samantha Putterman i Maria Ramírez UribePolitiFact staff writers. PolitiFact copy chief Matthew Crowley and chief correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.