Harris visits the border amid an intensifying battle over immigration

Vice President Kamala Harris will call for tighter border security measures during a visit to the southern border on Friday, a trip that amounts to her latest attempt to directly address some of her biggest political vulnerabilities.

In what her campaign is billing as a major speech in Douglas, Arizona, Harris plans to emphasize her support for a bipartisan border security bill and decry Republican nominee Donald Trump’s central role in derailing it.

“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” she said, according to an excerpt released by her campaign.

Her campaign is also releasing an ad that will air in Arizona and other battleground states. “She will secure our border,” the narrator says. “We need a real leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that is Kamala Harris.”

Harris’ decision to visit the border, as Trump vigorously attacks her on immigration and polls show voters trust him more on the issue, marks a strong effort to tackle a political vulnerability head-on. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), regularly criticize Democrats for not being tough enough on immigration, and President Joe Biden has suffered politically from the chaos at the border, although the number of border crossings has increased in recent months has decreased.

During her trip Friday, Harris plans to say forcefully that America must enforce its laws at the border, a campaign official said. She will also talk about her record as California attorney general, saying she prosecuted transnational gangs and criminal organizations that smuggled drugs or smuggled people and weapons across the border.

She will also visit Border Patrol agents and argue that they need more resources, and promise that combating the flow of fentanyl across the board will be “a top priority” of her presidency. As part of that effort, she will propose adding new fentanyl detection machines at border ports of entry and will press the Chinese government to do more against companies that make chemicals used in fentanyl.

“We have a broken immigration system. And it needs to be resolved,” the vice president said during an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday. She cited the bipartisan border bill, which would have significantly increased the number of border agents.

“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. “He killed a bill that would actually have been a solution because he wants to tackle a problem instead of solving a problem.”

She said if elected, she would bring back that legislation and try to pass it. Reflecting the sharp shift in the political landscape since Biden took office, Harris focused almost entirely on securing the border, nodding only briefly to the long-standing Democratic goal of protecting undocumented immigrants already in the country provide a way to become citizens.

“We need a comprehensive plan that includes what we need to do to not only strengthen our border, but also deal with the fact that we also need to create pathways for people to gain citizenship,” she said.

Trump has routinely unleashed harsh rhetoric against the influx of immigrants, suggesting it is poisoning the American way of life. At a campaign rally Monday in Pennsylvania, Trump referred to the immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio, saying, “You’ve got to get the hell out of them.”

Trump and Vance have previously claimed that immigrants in the city have stolen and eaten their neighbors’ pets.

Early in the Biden administration, Harris was tasked with leading diplomatic efforts to address the “root causes” of immigration by improving conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although her mandate did not include current border crossings, Republicans began calling her the “border czar” and tried to link her to the problems at the border.

Harris also made a trip to the border in June 2021, traveling to El Paso for a 4½-hour visit to tour operations.

(c)Washington Post