Vice President Kamala addressed immigration issues during an appearance at the southern U.S. border in Douglas, Arizona, Friday, making her first visit to the international boundary since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee as she confronts one of her biggest vulnerabilities ahead of the November election.
"We must tackle this issue from every angle," Harris said of immigration, "because our highest charge must be to protect the lives of our people. It must be to understand the pain and to have the courage to know that solutions are at hand, if we focus on fixing a problem instead of running on a problem."
"On this issue, writ large, we must ensure that our country strong and competitive. Which includes fixing our broken immigration system," Harris said. "Let me be clear. I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane. We can and we must do both."
"We need clear legal pathways for people seeking to come into our country, and we must make our current system work better," she said.
During her visit Harris chatted with local Border Patrol leaders about securing the area as they strode along a rust-colored stretch of wall built during Barack Obama's presidency. Temperatures neared 100 degrees.
“They’ve got a tough job, and they need, rightly, support to do their job,” Harris said of the Border Patrol as she entered the Douglas port of entry for a briefing on efforts to block the flow of fentanyl across the border. “They are very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them. And also thank them for the hard work they do.”
Trump and his fellow Republicans have pounded Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration and fault the vice president for spending little time visiting the border during her time in the White House.
Harris arrived by helicopter in Douglas, where she met with Mayor Donald Huish, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and County Supervisor Ann English, along with Sen. Mark Kelly and Attorney General Kris Mayes.
RELATED STORY | Hundreds of economists endorse Harris as campaigns turn focus to Arizona and the border
Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and one that contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Voters favor Trump on migration, and Harris has gone on offense to improve her standing on the issue and defuse a key line of political attack for Trump.
In nearly every campaign speech she gives, Harris recounts how a sweeping bipartisan package aiming to overhaul the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged top Republicans to oppose it.
After the immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. Since then, arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen.
Harris will also use her trip to remind voters about her work as attorney general of California in confronting crime along the border. During an August rally in Glendale, outside Phoenix, she talked about helping to prosecute drug- and people-smuggling gangs that operated transnationally and at the border.
“I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won,” Harris said then.
Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, at 27 the youngest member of Congress and a leading advocate for Harris with young and Hispanic voters, said that in backing stricter enforcement, Harris is trying to “strike a chord” and “she understands that, right now, there is a crisis at the border. It’s a humanitarian crisis.”
“That’s why she’s pushing for more resources at the border so that we have an orderly process, which is really important,” Frost said. “But, the thing is, that’s where Donald Trump stops, is just at enforcement.”
The vice president’s trip to Douglas thrusts the issue of immigration into the brightest spotlight yet less than six weeks before Election Day.
Trump didn’t wait for her to arrive there before pushing back. He pointed Friday to purported data about criminals entering the U.S. illegally in a bid to link Harris to violent crimes committed by migrants. In a scathing diatribe, he said “blood is on her hands.”
“These are hard, tough, vicious criminals that are free to roam in our country,” Trump said at a manufacturing plant in Michigan.
Earlier in the week, he told voters that “when Kamala speaks about the border, her credibility is less than zero."
The Trump campaign has also countered with its own TV ads deriding the vice president as a failed “border czar.”
“Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here,” said one spot. However, estimates on how many people have entered the country illegally since the start of the Biden administration in 2021 vary widely.
Harris also never held the position of border czar. Instead, her assignment was to tackle the “root causes” of migration from three Central American nations — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — that were responsible for a significant share of border crossers.
The vice president took a long-term approach to an immediate problem, helping persuade multinational corporations and Latin American businesses to invest in the region. That, she argued, would create jobs and give locals more reasons to stay home rather than take the arduous trek north.
Still, Trump has continued to decry an “invasion” of border crossers.
Polls show that most Americans trust him to handle immigration more than they do Harris.
Douglas is an overwhelmingly Democratic border town in GOP-dominated Cochise County, where the Republicans on the board of supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results. Trump was in the area last month, using a remote stretch of border wall and a pile of steel beams to draw a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.
The town of 16,000 people has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy port of entry that’s slated for a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned with making legal border crossings more efficient as they are with combatting illegal ones.
RELATED STORY | Harris, Trump clash on the economy, abortion, immigration in fiery debate
