How Harris gets Trump excited about immigration

Donald Trump may lose the election, but Kamala Harris largely concedes that he won the debate at the border.

Why it’s important: Both Trump and Harris are now promising to impose some of the most restrictive immigration, asylum and border policies in recent decades.

• Some immigration advocates on the left argue that Harris’ sudden election-year embrace of tough rules has weakened her influence to promote pathways to citizenship for select populations and other pro-immigration policies, she supports.

Send the news: Harris has moved from branding himself as an advocate for undocumented immigrants to touting himself as a former border prosecutor who will be more effective than Trump at the southern border.

• If Harris is elected, he promises to do just that restricting who can apply for asylum, and prosecuting crimes for illegal border crossings. She would also continue building a border wall.
• Harris recently told a crowd in Nevada, “I will protect our nation’s sovereignty, secure our border, and work to fix our broken immigration system.”
• Recently, her campaign began airing an ad in which a narrator declares, “We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border.” And that’s Kamala Harris.’

Between the lines: Some Democrats are frustrated that Harris and the Biden administration have recently embraced asylum restrictions that resemble Trump policies they once opposed.

• Andrea Flores, a former Biden White House official who worked on immigration, complained that Biden’s team tried to get tougher asylum restrictions, but Republicans then began criticizing immigrants who are here legally through programs that allow them to temporarily stay in the US – which has shifted the goalposts. once more.
• Flores told Axios: “The fact that (the Biden administration) had to change their last asylum restriction after three months shows that this is the wrong approach. We do not have to choose between a functional asylum system and a secure border.”
• Harris now supports changes to make the restrictions last longer.

The other side: Biden and Harris argue that their asylum restrictions are better than Trump’s previous attempts because of new ways they allow people to legally enter the country to seek protection — through an app and programs that allow certain populations to stay in the U.S. temporarily while they submit an application. remain permanently.

• But these programs have never guaranteed a path to permanent residence in the US.
• The government has decided not to extend temporary protection through these programs to Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians, potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of people in legal limbo.

Zoom in: Harris has vowed to crack down on the prosecution of illegal border crossings, after repeatedly saying she wanted to decriminalize them in 2019.

• She now supports expanding rules that essentially deny access to asylum to anyone who crosses the border illegally — forcing them to return to Mexico or quickly deporting them back to their home countries.

In 2019, she criticized similar policies: “These asylum seekers are often fleeing extreme violence. And what happens when they arrive? Trump says: ‘Go back where you came from.’ “

• Harris continues to tout the bipartisan border bill that Trump rejected among Republicans in Congress. It includes hundreds of millions of dollars for border wall construction.
• In 2019, Harris was one of five Senate Democrats who voted against a border security spending bill that led to a prolonged government shutdown.

Reality check: Although Harris has moved in Trump’s direction, the two are not the same on immigration.

• Trump has promised to implement some of the most disruptive and potentially violent border enforcement efforts in US history, including the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in history.
• He wants to build massive migrant detention camps, unleash the U.S. military on cartels in Mexico, impose a naval embargo to stop drug trafficking, get more federal law enforcement involved in migrant arrest teams, and more.
• “Send them back” has become a common chant at Trump’s rallies as he talks about the crackdown on undocumented immigrants and recent immigrants with temporary legal status.

What they say: Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, questioning whether she still supports what have long been top Democratic priorities for immigration policy.

• Harris’ campaign has declined to say whether she still supports the immigration reform bill that Biden’s team proposed on Day 1 of his presidency, which would have, among other things, provided expedited pathways to citizenship for DACA recipients and Temporary Protected Status holders.
• Her campaign has also declined to say whether she would still take executive action to try to provide a path to citizenship for “Dreamers” — a series of maneuvers she proposed in detail when she ran for president in 2019.