\u201cMy son Joshua was 18 years old when he was murdered by an illegal alien. He was tortured, strangled to death and then set on fire. When I hear Kamala Harris making a joke about the border and just laughing it off, it\u2019s painful. Kamala Harris was in charge of securing our border and she\u2019s done nothing. If Kamala Harris is elected president, it\u2019ll get worse. If it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Laura Wilkerson, speaking in an ad by the pro-Trump group Preserve America PAC, released Aug. 21<\/p>\n
Preserve America PAC is a pro-Trump group, largely funded by billionaire Miriam Adelson, that expects to spend $100 million in this election cycle, according to one news report. This ad, which comes in 30-second and 60-second versions, links the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, to the murder of a teenager nearly 14 years ago.<\/p>\n
Harris at the time was the district attorney for San Francisco. The murder took place in Texas. But if viewers aren\u2019t looking carefully at the date of the tombstone depicted at the start of the ad, they could easily conclude that this murder happened during the Biden administration as a result of its border policies.<\/p>\n
The ad packs a punch because the only voice is that of an aggrieved mother, Laura Wilkerson, who chokes up at points.<\/p>\n
\u201cJosh was 18 and he was the baby of our family,\u201d she says in the longer version of the ad. \u201cHe went to school one day and never came home, and that\u2019s where our nightmare began. He was murdered by an illegal alien. He was tortured, strangled to death and then set on fire. He didn\u2019t deserve to be murdered by somebody that should not have been in this country. I don\u2019t want sympathy from you. I want our leaders to change this.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2016, when Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, his campaign ran a similar ad featuring Wilkerson talking about the death of her son. \u201cHillary Clinton\u2019s border policy is going to allow people into the country just like the one that murdered my son,\u201d Wilkerson said in the 2016 ad.<\/p>\n
Wilkerson, who has been politically active for some time, testified on Capitol Hill in 2015 for stronger policies at the southern border.<\/p>\n
Hermilo Moralez, a Belizean who arrived in the United States as a 10-year-old, was convicted of murder in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison in the 2010 beating death of Joshua Wilkerson, his classmate at an alternative education school, according to news reports. News reports at the time also said that, according to the police, the two had known each other for about five years.<\/p>\n
Moralez was 19 at the time of the murder, which took place before the Obama administration implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that permitted undocumented children to remain in the United States as adults. Less than five months before the murder, Moralez was arrested on charges of stalking his girlfriend, but officials said it was unclear why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) failed to identify him as an undocumented immigrant and deport him at that time.<\/p>\n
After the introduction, both versions of the ad shift to attacking Harris on two false pretenses \u2014 that she was the \u201cborder czar\u201d and that she made a joke about the border situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I hear Kamala Harris making a joke about the border and just laughing it off, it\u2019s painful,\u201d Laura Wilkerson says in the short version. \u201cKamala Harris was in charge of securing our border and she\u2019s done nothing. If Kamala Harris is elected president, it\u2019ll get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKamala Harris was given that charge and she didn\u2019t do one thing about it,\u201d Wilkerson says in the long version. \u201cShe thinks it\u2019s a joke. It\u2019s like a kick in the gut to my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Harris was not in charge of immigration issues, though she was given a role, and she certainly wasn\u2019t a czar. Moreover, it\u2019s false to claim she had \u201cdone nothing\u201d or \u201cdidn\u2019t do one thing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2021, President Joe Biden assigned Harris to manage the \u201croot causes\u201d strategy \u2014 essentially a diplomatic effort with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to stem migration from those countries. The efforts appear to have had some impact \u2014 border arrests from those countries dropped from 700,000 in the 2021 fiscal year to fewer than 500,000 in 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. The downward trend has continued in 2024. For instance, nearly 77,000 migrants from those countries crossed the border in June 2021 \u2014 and the figure dropped to 17,000 in July of this year.<\/p>\n
But the problem shifted. Migrants surged from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti \u2014 countries that were not part of the \u201croot causes\u201d strategy. In July, about 88,000 people from countries other than the three Harris oversaw were arrested at the border \u2014 though that is down from a peak of 239,000 in December. On June 4, Biden issued an emergency order to curb asylum access, and illegal crossings have dropped significantly since then.<\/p>\n
As for the supposed joke, a Preserve America PAC source pointed to an exchange Harris had with NBC\u2019s Lester Holt in June 2021 during a visit to Guatemala as part of her root-causes work. Holt twice asked her if she planned to visit the border. Harris offered a peevish response, with a bit of a scornful laugh, but it\u2019s not really a joke \u2014 and she\u2019s certainly not joking about the situation at the border, as the ad implies.<\/p>\n
Harris: \u201cI\u2019m here in Guatemala today. At some point, we are going to the border; we\u2019ve been to the border \u2026\u201d<\/span> Asked why the ad would feature a murder that Harris was not associated with, the Preserve America PAC source pointed to this line in Wilkerson\u2019s monologue: \u201cI want our leaders to change this.\u201d<\/p>\n The PAC did not provide an on-the-record statement or respond to a request to make Wilkerson available for an interview.<\/p>\n Wilkerson, having suffered the anguish of losing a child, is an advocate for tough policies on the southern border. But this is a highly misleading ad, especially the closing line: \u201cIf Kamala Harris is elected president, it\u2019ll get worse. If it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours.\u201d<\/p>\n The ad flashes an image of the tombstone at the start \u2014 and the longer version cites a 2010 news report \u2014 but Harris had no role in immigration when the tragedy happened. It also falsely claims she was responsible for border security and made a \u201cjoke\u201d about it. The ad also ignores the fact that the border surge has all but ended in recent months as a result of tougher policies implemented by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n The tragic story of Joshua Wilkerson is recounted accurately, but the rest of the ad is mostly false, so it earns Three Pinocchios.<\/p>\n (About our rating scale)<\/p>\n Send us facts to check by filling out this form<\/p>\n Sign up for The Fact Checker weekly newsletter<\/p>\n The Fact Checker is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cMy son Joshua was 18 years old when he was murdered by an illegal alien. He was tortured, strangled to death and then set on fire. When I hear Kamala Harris making a joke about the border and just laughing it off, it\u2019s painful. Kamala Harris was in charge of securing our border and she\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHolt interjects: \u201cYou haven\u2019t been to the border.\u201d<\/span>
\nShe answers: \u201cAnd I haven\u2019t been to Europe. I don\u2019t understand the point that you are making. I\u2019m not discounting the importance of the border. \u2026 I care about what\u2019s happened at the border. I\u2019m in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe Pinocchio Test<\/h3>\n
Three Pinocchios<\/h3>\n