Kamala Harris’s campaign manager told CBS News that the candidate will continue Joe Biden’s administration’s 2023 and 2024 bans on access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News, Harris’ campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, was asked if the vice president would keep the partial ban on asylum claims that Mr. Biden enacted in June through a presidential proclamation.

“I think at this point, you know, the policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue,” Chávez Rodríguez responded.

Chávez Rodríguez’s comments inside a restaurant in Tucson, Arizona are the first indication that U.S. border policy may not change significantly if Harris succeeds Mr. Biden as president, despite pressure from progressive activists angry with the Biden administration’s pivot on asylum.

It’s unrealistic to expect a Vice President to break publicly with the President just days after he abandoned his campaign. It also makes tactical sense to send an “order at the border” message on an issue that polls show is a likely vulnerability for the Harris campaign.

Still, it would be far better for Chávez Rodríguez and other surrogates to follow up with something along the lines of: “…and we will fund and expand the U.S. asylum system so that it can hand down fair decisions with due process, in a matter of months instead of years, which will make these asylum restrictions unnecessary.”

Funding and expanding asylum processing and adjudication doesn’t require passage of new laws. It just requires some modest shifts in allocations in the annual Homeland Security budget appropriation.

Instead of proposing fixes to the badly broken asylum system, though, Chávez Rodríguez shifted to a longtime Biden and centrist Democrat talking point.

“We know at the end of the day the only way to really modernize our immigration system and secure our border is for Congress to pass common-sense immigration legislation,” Chávez Rodríguez added.

While this is true, immigration reform is not going to happen soon—not as long as you’ve got a near-50-50 Senate and the filibuster still in place. So this is “just empty words” at best, or “shifting blame elsewhere” at worst. Neither motivates voters. The campaign will need to do better.