Harris accuses Trump of “playing politics” with immigration during his border visit

When Vice President Kamala Harris makes her first trip to the southern border as the Democratic nominee, it will mark a major step in her effort to reduce Donald Trump’s power with voters on immigration.

The problem is one of its greatest vulnerabilities. And Harris goes on the attack. She will use the stop in Douglas, Arizona, to call for tighter border security while re-emphasizing Trump’s role in ending the bipartisan border deal earlier this year, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to discuss Trump’s speech to speak on Friday.

The campaign will also launch a new ad in Arizona and battleground states, highlighting its plan to “hire more border agents, enforce the law, increase technology, and stop fentanyl and human trafficking.”

“The American people deserve a president who is more concerned about border security than playing political games,” Harris will say, according to her prepared remarks.

Voters continue to give Trump higher marks on immigration, even as the vice president has used her reputation as California’s attorney general in recent months to tout her work prosecuting international gangs and criminal organizations that traffic drugs, weapons and traffic people. She has also promised to bring back the border law if she wins the White House.

“Donald Trump heard about the bill, realized it would solve a problem he wanted to address, and told them to drop the bill and not vote on it,” Harris said during her interview with MSNBC on Wednesday night. “He killed a bill that would actually have been a solution because he wants to address a problem instead of solving a problem.”

According to the senior campaign official, Harris wanted to travel to the border to reiterate this message, speaking in a community on the front lines of the immigration challenge. She will meet with Border Patrol agents on Friday, her campaign said, and plans to say agents need more resources. The border bill she supported would have hired 1,500 additional border agents and officers and was approved by the Border Patrol Union.

The vice president will also speak about fentanyl and pressure the Chinese government to crack down on companies that make the chemicals used to make the drug.

The visit comes as Trump continues to harass Harris on immigration, misleadingly labeling her a “border czar” to exaggerate her work tackling the root causes of migration in the Joe Biden administration. On the day of Harris’ acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last month, Trump visited Cochise County, Arizona — the same county Harris will visit — to blame her for the border crisis.

He blasted Harris again Thursday for her plans to visit the border, slamming her during a news conference in New York City for “playing right into her opponent’s hands.” He also continued to rail against the border bill, calling it “horrendous” and an “amnesty bill.”

“She should save her plane ticket. She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border,” Trump said. “Instead, she goes there to convince people that she wasn’t as bad as everyone knows. She was the worst in history, downright incompetent, weak and ineffective.”

Harris has previously visited the border in her capacity as vice president. But early in the Biden administration, she made negative headlines after a difficult exchange with NBC’s Lester Holt, who asked why she had not visited the border. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said — an excerpt that Republicans have continued to recycle as they condemn Harris on an issue into which they have poured millions of dollars.

The comments came as the White House grapples with immigration staff turnover and widespread confusion over its policies and messaging. Now, more than three years later, Democrats have united around a consistent election-year message: Democrats want solutions, while Trump has killed a bipartisan border deal for political gain.

After the collapse of the border legislation, Democrats took an aggressive stance on the issue, taking a page directly from Rep. Tom Suozzi’s playbook after he won his special election in New York in February by pushing for strengthening border security.

Harris’ advisers believe this message is finally getting through to some voters, though there is more work to be done — as evidenced by Harris’ decision to visit the border.

Harris can also benefit from some facts on the ground, which she is expected to tout during her speech on Friday. Border crossings are now as low as they were during Trump’s final month in office, avoiding media reports of an overwhelmed southern border just weeks before Election Day. After the border deal collapsed in February, Biden tightened asylum policies at the southern border between ports of entry, leading to a sharp drop in illegal border crossings — giving Harris a data point to track.

While Democrats are relieved by Harris’ message on border security, some allies and immigration advocates have quietly urged the vice president to talk more about the need for relief for undocumented immigrants who have lived long in the United States, in an attempt to find a way through a broken immigration system. And they believe Trump’s promises to carry out mass deportations offer Harris an opportunity to re-challenge his controversial family separation policy.

The senior campaign official said Harris will speak Friday about the need to secure the border while creating an orderly and humane immigration system, arguing that the country must prioritize both security and protecting its “legacy as a nation of immigrants ‘.

Lisa Kashinksy contributed to this report.