Harris visits Mexican border as she takes tougher stance on migration – The Irish News

Vice President Kamala Harris has walked a rough stretch along the US-Mexico border in Arizona and called for further tightening of asylum restrictions as she sought to take a tougher stance on illegal migration.

Her push to further limit asylum claims goes beyond President Joe Biden’s policies on an issue where her rival, former President Donald Trump, has an edge with voters.

She balanced tough talk about border control with calls for a better way to welcome immigrants legally.

“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose between securing our border or creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Ms. Harris said. “We can and must do both.”

On her first trip to the international border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Ms. Harris chatted with local Border Patrol leaders as they walked past a rust-colored stretch of wall built during Barack Obama’s presidency. The temperature in Douglas, Arizona, approached 100 degrees Celsius during a conversation that lasted about half an hour.

She later received a closed-door briefing at the port of entry in Douglas on efforts to combat drug trafficking and improve the legal flow of goods and people across the border.

Border Patrol agents have “a tough job” and deserve support, she said.

The vice president’s visit was intended as a retort to Mr. Trump and his fellow Republicans, who have attacked her relentlessly over the Biden administration’s migration record and blamed her for the White House has spent little time on the border.

Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only state bordering Mexico that suffered a record influx of asylum seekers last year.

She used her comments to question Trump’s own record on migration during his presidency, saying he did nothing to fix the legal immigration system or address an outdated asylum system. And she said he had failed to solve a shortage of immigration judges and border agents.

Mr. Harris recounted how a sweeping, bipartisan package aimed at overhauling the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Mr. Trump urged Republicans to oppose it.

“Donald Trump tanked it,” she said, so he could campaign against disorder at the border.

“He prefers to tackle a problem rather than solve a problem. And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than about playing political games and their personal political future.”

After immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules barring migrants from being granted asylum if U.S. officials believe the southern border has been overwhelmed. Since then, the number of arrests for illegal border crossings has fallen.

Ms. Harris’ plan to surpass Biden’s efforts at the border would include tougher criminal charges for people who repeatedly cross the border illegally and require asylum claims to be made at ports of entry.

She used her trip to remind voters of her work as California’s attorney general in fighting crime along the border. She spoke about helping to prosecute drug and human smuggling gangs that operated across borders and at the border.

Trump didn’t wait for her to get there before pushing back. He pointed Friday to alleged data about criminals entering the U.S. illegally in an effort to link Harris to violent crimes committed by migrants.

In a scathing tirade, he said there was “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.”

Douglas, where Mr. Harris appeared, is a predominantly Democratic border town in Republican-dominated Cochise County, where Republicans on the Board of Supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results.

Mr. 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 Ms. 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.