ACLU questionnaire from 2019 highlights Harris’s past support for progressive causes

A 2019 questionnaire filled out by then-Senator Kamala Harris illuminates her previous support for more progressive causes, contrasting her more moderate approach as she now seeks to appeal to a broad swath of Americans in the final days of the 2024 presidential election.

Harris’s answers on the form by the American Civil Liberties Union indicate that she once backed funding cuts to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and supported taxes being used to fund gender transition surgeries for federal prisoners and detained immigrants. The now-vice president also backed federally decriminalizing drug possession for personal use, and she pledged to “end” immigration detention.

When she filled out the form, Harris was running for president in the 2020 primary, but she ended up dropping out before voting began.

In an interview with CNN in August, Harris noted that she has modified some of her positions, but insisted that her “values have not changed.”

“The Vice President’s positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris Administration,” a Harris campaign advisor told CNN.

“As President, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions for the sake of progress,” a spokesperson added.

Harris’s tougher rhetoric on immigration enforcement departs significantly from the position she took in the 2019 questionnaire.

She wrote that she would end private prisons and immigration detention facilities, adding that she would cut ICE funding.

“Our immigrant detention system is out of control, and I believe we must end the unfair incarceration of thousands of individuals, families and children,” the then-senator wrote. “I was one of the first Senators after