Harris heads to the southern border of the US, looking for a way to close the voting gap with Trump

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to go on the offensive against former President Donald Trump on immigration on Friday when she visits the southern border in Arizona, campaign aides told CNN, as she seeks to upend a political vulnerability .

Immigration has played a prominent role in the 2024 presidential election, with polls showing voters have more confidence in Trump to tackle the issue than Harris.

Democrats, grappling with years of border crises, have tried to gain ground by pointing to the bipartisan border measure that Republicans in Congress blocked earlier this year after Trump spoke out against it.

Advisors to the vice president remain concerned about the divide between the candidates on immigration. But they also cite recent polls showing that Trump’s lead on the issue has eroded since Harris took over from President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic party — giving them an opportunity, they say, to amplify their message and continue to close the gap.

Trump hinted at his current poll lead on Thursday when he slammed his rival ahead of her visit to the border.

“Why would she now go to the border and play right into her opponent’s hands?” the former president told reporters at Trump Tower in New York. “She keeps talking about how she supposedly wants to fix the border. We’d just ask, ‘Why didn’t she do it four years ago?’

Part of the Harris campaign’s strategy to counter Trump includes a new ad, titled “Never Backed Down,” which will run in Arizona and other battleground states, highlighting Harris’ past border-related work and outlining her plans outlined, including hiring more border agents.

“She has put cartel members and drug traffickers behind bars and she will secure our border,” the narrator says.

Harris plans to use her trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to condemn Trump for scuttling the bipartisan border deal and delve into her work as attorney general of California, a border state, a campaign aide said.

“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris is expected to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks.

An early strategy

The Harris campaign signaled early on that it intended to counter Trump’s attacks on the vice president and the administration’s handling of border security. Just days after she launched her presidential bid, campaign officials released a video that drew a contrast between Harris and Trump on immigration policy — leaning specifically on border security.

“Kamala Harris supports increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. Donald Trump blocked a bill to increase the number of Border Patrol agents,” the voiceover in the video said.

Harris previously visited the border as vice president and has cited her work as a border state senator and attorney general.

Friday’s visit comes as border crossings are at their lowest since 2020 — and follows a recent New York Times/Siena College poll that showed Trump leading in the battleground state.

U.S. officials have touted low border crossings for months, citing recent executive actions to curb access to asylum at the southern border, even as Trump has leveled attacks on the Biden administration’s handling of border security.

The dramatic recent drop in border crossings has given the Biden administration a reprieve after struggling with record crossings amid unprecedented migration across the Western Hemisphere.

At the time, Republicans incorrectly referred to Harris as the “border czar,” making her solely responsible for managing the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s a title Harris’ team has been trying to shake since the moment Biden tasked her with tackling the root causes of migration in 2021.

Harris has spoken only occasionally about her mission, which, sources said, has seen early success in Central America as a result of major private sector investment. But that has been combined with the government’s larger migration problems.

Harris campaign officials think she has a case on immigration: She’s using the failed bipartisan border measure to portray Trump as not serious about the border and citing her record as California’s attorney general in tackling transnational criminal gangs.

Campaign allies have also emphasized the need to look beyond borders and talk about broader immigration reform, building on the vice president’s background in the Senate and in California dealing with immigrant issues.

‘It’s good that she’s going. It’s helpful to get her message out,” a source close to the campaign told CNN. “Obviously she’s at the border, that’s the main focus. But also talk more broadly about the entire system.”

According to a campaign official, Harris plans to “reject the false choice between securing the border and creating an immigration system that is safe, orderly and humane – arguing that we must protect both our country’s security and its lasting legacy as a nation.” of immigrants. .”

Last week, Harris blasted Trump over his immigration proposals, citing his controversial policies, including his proposal for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, to paint a dark picture of her Republican rival.

“As we fight to move our nation forward toward a better future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will continue to try to pull us backward. We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have promised to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation in American history,” she said at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute leadership conference in Washington.

“Imagine what that would look like and what that would be. How is that going to happen? Massive raids, huge detention camps. What are they talking about?” she said.

CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.

The CNN Wire
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