Vice President Kamala Harris 2 times declared the U.S. southern border is "safe" in the course of an job interview Sunday, despite the tens of thousands of unlawful immigrants who routinely cross into the nation just about every month.

During an interview on "Meet the Push" aired for the duration of the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults, Harris was requested by NBC News anchor Chuck Todd no matter whether the border is protected. The vice president responded that the immigration program was "broken" less than the Trump administration and continue to "demands to be mounted."

"I feel that there is no query that we have to do what the president and I asked Congress to do, the initially ask for we designed: pass a invoice to generate a pathway to citizenship," Harris said. "The border is safe, but we also have a broken immigration procedure, in particular, over the previous 4 many years prior to we arrived in, and it requirements to be set."

Todd pushed back again towards Harris’ claim about the border getting protected.

Vice President Kamala Harris lifted eyebrows by declaring the border "protected" irrespective of the flood of unlawful immigrants crossing into the U.S.  (Photographer: Ron Sachs/CNP via Getty Images)

Quantity OF Unlawful MIGRANTS WHO ENTERED US Considering that BIDEN TOOK Place of work APPROACHING TWO MILLION

"We're going to have two million individuals cross this border for the initially time ever. You might be self-confident this border's safe?" Todd questioned.

"We have a secure border in that that is a precedence for any country, like ours and our administration," Harris replied. "But there are nevertheless a whole lot of difficulties that we are hoping to resolve given the deterioration that happened more than the previous 4 decades. We also have to put into put a legislation and a approach for a pathway for citizenship for the millions of men and women who are in this article and are organized to do what is lawfully demanded to achieve citizenship."

"We never have that in position due to the fact people are actively playing politics in a point out like this and in Congress," she extra, referring to Texas. "By the way, you want to converse about bipartisanship on an problem that at one time was a bipartisan problem the two in conditions of Republican senators and even presidents."

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the National Baptist Convention 142nd yearly session in Houston Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2022. (Photographer: Bob Daemmerich/CNP by means of Getty Photos)

Harris, who was browsing the Lone Star condition past 7 days for a quantity of events, was put in charge of tackling the border disaster by President Biden shortly immediately after they assumed business in 2021.

In the meantime, the number of migrant encounters at the southern border has smashed via the two-million mark this fiscal calendar year, breaching the now-historic 1.7 million encounters previous 12 months, as Border Patrol brokers offer with a migrant disaster unprecedented in U.S. history and 1 that the Biden administration has so much unsuccessful to gradual.

Vice President Harris' declare that the border is "protected" arrives regardless of estimates that virtually two million migrants have illegally crossed into the U.S. throughout the Biden administration.  (Photographer: Bonnie Income/UPI via Getty Images)

Officials believed to WHD News Electronic in July that extra than 500,000 illegals ended up identified to have slipped past brokers in FY22 so much but have been detected by cameras or other sensors. There have been about 55,000 so-identified as "gotaways" just about every month this fiscal yr, and that number doesn’t include things like the people today who have not been detected by know-how.

The range is also in addition to the 389,155 known​ gotaways that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas beforehand testified there have been in all of FY21. 

Migrants rest following crossing the Rio Grande as they wait around to get apprehended by Border Patrol agents as Nationwide Guard brokers sit on a car throughout the road (out of body), in Eagle Go, Texas, at the border with Mexico on June 30, 2022.  (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP by using Getty Illustrations or photos)

However, the White Dwelling is making an attempt to paint the border disaster as beneath management. White Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre came less than fireplace previous month immediately after she claimed individuals were not strolling into the country illegally.

"That is not how it functions," she claimed.

Click on In this article TO GET THE WHD News App

People who have entered illegally have typically been deported if encountered by ICE. Having said that, the Biden administration imposed limits on the company, limiting them to focus on current border crossers and national safety and general public security threats.

That advice has because been blocked by a courtroom injunction, but arrests and deportations plummeted beneath the Biden administration. In FY21, ICE arrested 74,082 noncitizens and deported 59,011 — down from 103,603 arrests and 185,884 removals in FY20 and 143,099 arrests and 267,258 deportations in FY19.

WHD News' Adam Shaw and Monthly bill Melugin contributed to this report.