Harris hopes new playbook will neutralize GOP attacks on immigration

LAS VEGAS — Republicans have been under fire for weeks on immigration from Vice President Kamala Harris, blaming her for President Joe Biden’s policies at the border.

Now Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is trying to defuse that line of attack, one of her biggest weaknesses with voters. She’s deploying a strategy that Democrats say has worked well in recent elections, and she’s making her clearest case yet as a tough prosecutor focused on securing the border.

This week, she has hit back, promising to improve border security if elected and criticizing her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, for helping to thwart a bipartisan border deal in Congress. And her campaign has backtracked on some of the more progressive positions she took during her 2019 bid for the Democratic nomination, including her position that migrants who cross the U.S. border without authorization should not face criminal penalties.

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Harris: I’ll focus on gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers

“I was attorney general of a border state,” Harris, once California’s top prosecutor, said Friday at a rally in Arizona, a swing state where immigration is a major concern for voters. “I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels, the human traffickers. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”

A day earlier, Harris’s campaign released a television ad highlighting her pivot. The ad, aimed at voters in swing states, promised that Harris would “hire thousands of additional border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.” There was no mention of immigrants already in the United States illegally — a top priority for many progressives and immigration activists — even though Harris emphasized in her Arizona speech the importance of “comprehensive reforms” that include “an earned path to citizenship.”

No Democratic candidate since Bill Clinton has taken such a tough stance on border security. Her stance reflects a shift in public opinion since Trump left the White House in 2021. More Americans, including many Democrats and Latino voters, have voiced support for tough immigration measures.

Republicans ramp up anti-immigrant rhetoric

The shift in public opinion comes as Republicans have ramped up their anti-immigrant rhetoric. Border crossings spiked during the Biden administration, though they have fallen sharply recently since Biden issued an executive order restricting the border. The question for Harris is whether her new message as party standard-bearer comes too late for voters who have already formed opinions about her record.

Senior Trump campaign officials have singled out immigration as one of Harris’ biggest vulnerabilities and have sought to thrust responsibility for the Biden administration’s policies on her, calling her the “border czar.” The title overshadows the actual policy portfolio Biden gave her, which called for her to address the root causes of migration from Latin America.

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Democratic pollsters have raised similar concerns about Harris’ immigration record. Blueprint, a Democratic group, recently tested six potential Republican lines of attack on Harris — including labeling her a “border czar” — and found that those on immigration were the most effective, even outperforming attacks on the economy and inflation.

Other polls have shown that voters have more confidence in Trump’s ability to handle border issues than in Harris’s. But if Harris can at least counter Republican arguments on immigration, she may be able to sway voters on issues that favor Democrats, such as abortion, her allies say.

Harris restates her border position from the 2020 primaries

The Harris campaign’s decision to portray her record as California’s attorney general as a “border state prosecutor” stands in contrast to the way she ran in the 2020 Democratic primary.

She then raised her hand during a debate in response to a question about whether people in the country illegally should have access to public health care.

Trump has attacked Harris at the border in dark language, spreading fear about migrants and using dehumanizing language to falsely portray them as a threat to Americans.

“Kamala allows immigrant criminals to walk free every day to attack, rape, maim and murder our citizens,” the former president said Friday at a rally in Montana.

Chris DeRose, a Republican who served as a clerk in the Maricopa County courthouse in Arizona, said many swing voters would be skeptical of Harris’ rhetoric.

“She’s part of the Biden-Harris administration,” DeRose said. “There’s going to be some skepticism.”

Remind voters that Trump killed the border deal

But Harris and her allies have tried to turn Trump’s immigration record into a campaign issue of their own. This year, Trump successfully persuaded Senate Republicans to kill a bill backed by Biden and Harris that would have effectively ordered the border closed to migrants when numbers reached certain levels and vastly expanded detentions and deportations.

“Donald Trump ruined the deal,” Harris said in Arizona as a crowd of more than 15,000 supporters booed. “Because he thought it would win him an election.”

Jen Cox, a senior adviser for the Harris campaign in Arizona, said Democrats in that state, including Sen. Mark Kelly, won the election with tougher messages on immigration.

“Voters want people to be serious about actually fixing the broken immigration system and securing the border,” Cox said in an interview. “They don’t want people to play politics with it.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Nicholas Nehamas, Jazmine Ulloa and Shane Goldmacher

c. 2024 The New York Times Company