Analysis: Kamala Harris speaks out hard on border security to take on Donald Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris is hardening her stance on illegal immigration and will take on hardliner Donald Trump in a series of campaign events and digital ads on his top issue in the coming weeks.

The campaign plans to promote Harris’ support for a bipartisan border security bill — which was defeated in the Senate in February after Trump spoke out against it — that would have increased funding for border agents and detention facilities, an official said.

Harris’ more combative approach to immigration is expected to be evident in her nationwide campaign with her running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who was chosen in part because of his appeal to voters in America’s heartland.

Harris will also highlight Trump’s most divisive actions, including his 2018 policy that separated thousands of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border and a 2017 executive order that sought to ban travel from certain Muslim-majority countries. A version of the ban was upheld by the Supreme Court a year later.

A campaign aide said Harris had a chance to reintroduce herself to voters after US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month and became the Democratic presidential nominee.

“It’s all part of a larger effort by Harris to be direct and to take on Trump directly,” said Matt Barreto, a pollster who has worked with the Harris and Biden campaigns. “Democrats always do well when they focus on the immigration issue and don’t shy away from it.”

The enforcement-first stance is a departure from Biden’s 2020 campaign, when he promised a more humane approach to immigration than Trump. Biden gradually hardened his approach as illegal border crossings rose.

Trump’s campaign has tried to blame Harris for illegal immigration, calling her a failed “border czar,” even though her portfolio has focused on the drivers of migration from Central America.

“If the dangerously liberal Kamala becomes president, our borders will remain wide open to terrorists and criminals from around the world who will face no punishment for committing horrific immigration crimes,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement when asked about Harris’ record.

Harris praises criminal record

Harris began laying out her new, more combative strategy in Atlanta last week, criticizing Trump for letting the border security bill fail.

She also touted her record of border-related prosecutions as California’s attorney general. “I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels, and human traffickers who were coming into our country illegally,” she said. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”

Harris has made the border security bill a central part of her platform, and a digital campaign ad cast the election as a choice between “the one who will fix our broken immigration system. And the one who tries to stop it.”

Jeffrey Jarman, a Wichita State University professor who specializes in political communications, said Harris’ opposition was a way to avoid leaving the border security issue to Republicans.

“By not talking about the issue, Republicans are able to completely dominate the discussion and paint it in the most unflattering way possible,” he said.

But he acknowledged that an attack was unlikely to win over Republican voters and that Harris risked being distracted by issues less important to her supporters.

“Candidates who spend too much time talking about their opponents’ problems will always have a harder time winning elections,” he said.

Numerous polls suggest voters are more concerned about high levels of illegal immigration under Biden. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May, about 45% of registered voters said immigration has made life harder for native-born Americans.

The number of illegal border crossings has fallen sharply since Biden imposed new restrictions on asylum at the border in June.

A memo released Friday by the advocacy group Immigration Hub argues that Harris could motivate voters if she links her law enforcement record to protections for immigrants already in the U.S. illegally, citing polls in seven key states.

Harris played a key role in the Biden administration’s announcement in June that it would offer a path to citizenship for spouses of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Reuters previously reported.

Trump has promised to carry out mass deportations if re-elected.

Ken Budge, the Democratic mayor of the 5,000-person border town of Bisbee, Arizona, said the surge in illegal border crossings in recent years has sometimes made it difficult to provide basic necessities to migrants passing through.

He said the Harris campaign wanted to solve the border issue. “They don’t want to just push the issue aside.”

Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat who won a midterm election for Congress in February by taking a tough stance on the border, said a member of Harris’ team sent him a link to her social media ad on immigration last week. He said they thought he might like it.

“A lot of my advisers and a lot of politicians said, ‘What are you talking about on immigration? It’s a Republican issue,’” Suozzi said in an interview.

“I said, ‘No, it’s an American problem. It’s what people talk about.'”