Harris visits the US-Mexico border – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Vice President Kamala Harris walked a rugged stretch of fence along Arizona’s border with Mexico on Friday, making her first visit to the international border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee as she faces one of her biggest vulnerabilities ahead of the elections in November.

Harris chatted with local Border Patrol leaders about securing the area as they walked past a rust-colored stretch of wall built during Barack Obama’s presidency. The temperature was approaching 100 degrees.

“They have a tough job, and they need, rightly, support to do their job,” Harris said of the Border Patrol as she entered the port of entry in Douglas for a briefing on efforts to stem the flow of fentanyl across the border. block. . “They are very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk to them about what we can continue to do to support them. And also thank them for the hard work they do.”

She was later expected to call for further tightening of asylum restrictions, going beyond President Joe Biden’s policies on an issue where her rival, former President Donald Trump, has an edge with voters.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have relentlessly criticized Harris over the Biden administration’s record on migration, blaming the vice president for spending little time at the border during her time in the White House.

Harris will call for stronger security measures, including new fentanyl detection machines and more Border Patrol agents, a senior campaign aide told NBC News. The aide said she also plans to pressure the Chinese government to take tougher action against companies that make the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl. Her team is also releasing a new ad touting her record as California’s attorney general and highlighting her ability to prosecute transnational gangs and drug traffickers.

Harris arrived in Douglas by helicopter, where she met with Mayor Donald Huish, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and County Supervisor Ann English, along with Senator Mark Kelly and Attorney General Kris Mayes.

Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only state bordering Mexico that suffered a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Voters favor Trump on migration, and Harris has erred in improving her position on the issue and defusing a key political line of attack for Trump.

In nearly every campaign speech she gives, Harris recounts how a sweeping bipartisan package aimed at overhauling the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged Republicans to oppose it.

“The American people deserve a president who is more concerned about border security than playing political games,” Harris said, according to an excerpt of her campaign comments.

After immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that would ban migrants from receiving asylum if U.S. officials deem the southern border to be overwhelmed. Since then, the number of arrests for illegal border crossings has fallen.

Harris will also use her trip to remind voters of her work as California’s attorney general in fighting crime along the border. At a rally in Glendale, outside Phoenix, in August, she spoke about helping prosecute drug and human trafficking rings operating transnationally and at the border.

“I prosecuted them case after case, and I won,” Harris said at the time.

Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress at 27 and a leading advocate for Harris among young and Hispanic voters, said Harris is “trying to strike a chord” by supporting stricter enforcement. and “she understands that, right now, there is a crisis at the border. It is a humanitarian crisis.”

“That’s why she’s pushing for more resources at the border so that we have an orderly process, which is very important,” Frost said. “But the point is that Donald Trump stops there, namely only with enforcement.”

The vice president’s visit to Douglas puts the issue of immigration in the biggest spotlight less than six weeks before Election Day.

President Joe Biden delivered his final speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, talking about support for Ukraine and challenges in artificial intelligence.

Trump didn’t wait for her to get there before pushing back. He pointed to alleged data on criminals entering the US illegally on Friday in an attempt to link Harris to violent crimes committed by migrants. In a scathing tirade he said: ‘There is blood on her hands.’

“These are tough, tough, vicious criminals walking free in our country,” Trump said at a factory in Michigan.

Earlier this week, he told voters that “when Kamala speaks about the border, her credibility is less than zero.”

The Trump campaign has also responded with its own TV ads mocking the vice president as a failed “border czar.”

“Under Harris, more than 10 million are here illegally,” said one spot. However, estimates of how many people have entered the country illegally since the start of the Biden administration in 2021 vary widely.

Harris has also never held the position of border czar. Instead, its mission was to address the “root causes” of migration from three Central American countries – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – that were responsible for a significant share of border crossings.

The vice president took a long-term approach to an immediate problem and helped convince multinationals and Latin American companies to invest in the region. That, she argued, would create jobs and give locals more reasons to stay home rather than make the arduous trek north.

Yet Trump has continued to decry an “invasion” of border crossings.

Polls show most Americans have more confidence in him to handle immigration than in Harris.

Douglas, where Harris will appear, is a predominantly Democratic border town in Republican Party-dominated Cochise County, where 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 and used a remote stretch of border wall and a stack of steel beams to create a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.

The city of 16,000 has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy gateway that is in need of a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned about making legal border crossings more efficient as they are about combating illegal crossings.

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Cooper reported from Phoenix.