‘Liberal weak on crime’: Trump campaign hits back after Harris blames him for ‘violent crime wave’

Trump’s campaign criticized Vice President Kamala Harris as a “liar” and “desperate” after her campaign released a TV ad claiming former President Trump’s policies had caused a “wave of violent crime.” Speaking to Fox News Digital, she said Harris is an “open-borders, soft-on-crime liberal.”

Harris’ campaign, just a day after the vice president accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in Chicago, released a television ad focused on crime. The ad claims that under Harris’ watch, “violent crime has gone down.”

“Her record as a district attorney and attorney general — locking up child molesters, online predators and violent offenders, and taking down international drug cartels,” the ad reads. “Under Donald Trump? A wave of violent crime. And Trump ordered MAGA extremists to destroy the bipartisan border security deal.

“Trump just talks tough. Kamala Harris is tough.”

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Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national spokesperson, called Harris “a liar.”

“The truth is that Kamala and Biden, right out of office, rolled back every effective immigration policy President Trump put in place and opened the border to criminals, terrorists and drug cartels,” Leavitt told Fox News Digital. “If Ms. Border Czar Harris really wanted to secure the border, why doesn’t she go back to Washington and do it today?

“She won’t do that because she’s a liberal who supports open borders and commits few crimes.”

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that violent crime “has not declined, but increased nearly 25% in 66 major U.S. cities, while Kamala was responsible for three of the four most murderous years in the past 25 years.”

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“Under Kamala, the illegal immigrants she allowed into the country are brutally raping and murdering our citizens,” the campaign continued, adding that as district attorney, Harris “was known for his soft approach to crime, while San Francisco had its highest murder rate in a decade.”

The campaign said Harris became “the model” for “Soros-backed prosecutors across the country.”

“Drug cartels have not been ‘taken down,’ they have devastated our communities with deadly drugs flowing across the border in unprecedented numbers,” the campaign continued. “The Sinaloa cartel has made record profits under Kamala.”

As for the bipartisan border bill, the Trump campaign said it would have “put millions of illegal immigrants on the fast track to citizenship.”

Trump visited the border in Arizona on Thursday.

Trump’s campaign points to Americans like Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley and Rachel Morin, all of whom were allegedly murdered by illegal immigrants.

Two Venezuelan nationals — 21-year-old Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel and 26-year-old Franklin Jose Peña Ramos — have been charged with first-degree murder in the case of 12-year-old Nungaray. The two men crossed into the U.S. illegally earlier this year and are accused of strangling the pre-teen to death in June.

Jose Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant, was charged with the murder of 22-year-old Riley. Ibarra entered the U.S. in 2022 through El Paso, Texas, and was released on parole. He initially lived in New York City, where he was arrested for allegedly endangering a child before moving to Athens, Georgia.

Ibarra has been charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault, unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, obstructing a 911 call and concealing the death of another person in connection with Riley’s killing.

The Salvadoran national believed to be responsible for Morin’s death, 23-year-old Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, was also in the country illegally. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he was apprehended by Border Patrol three times within a few days in January 2023 and February 2023 and each time deported back to Mexico under Title 42.

He then successfully entered the U.S. in February 2023 through an escape system, meaning he entered the country without being screened, admitted, or paroled by a U.S. immigration officer, near El Paso, Texas.

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During his visit to Arizona on Thursday, Trump invited Angel Moms to share stories about victims of illegal immigrant crime.

“We’ve made many trips to the border over the years and told many stories of victims at the border, including the stories of the wonderful Angel Moms,” Trump said. “Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but we’ve never seen anything as big and as vicious as what we’re seeing in our country right now.

“It is an attack of violence.”

A Trump campaign aide told Fox News Digital that the campaign’s strategy will be to “continue to emphasize immigration and Kamala’s dereliction of duty at the border.”