Harris walks the fence at the US-Mexico border as she works to take a tougher stance on migration

DOUGLAS, Ariz. (AP) – Vice President Kamala Harris walked a rugged stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border Friday and called for further tightening of asylum restrictions as she tried to take a tougher stance on illegal migration and one of her biggest address vulnerabilities. in the November elections.

Harris’ effort to further limit asylum claims goes beyond President Joe Biden’s policies on an issue where her rival, former President Donald Trump, has an edge with voters. She balanced tough talk about border control with calls for a better way to welcome immigrants legally.

“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose between securing our border or creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and must do both.”

In her first trip to the international border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris chatted with local Border Patrol leaders as they walked past a rust-colored stretch of wall built during Barack Obama’s presidency. The temperature in Douglas, Arizona, approached 100 degrees during a conversation that lasted about half an hour.

Later, at the port of entry in Douglas, Harris received a closed-door briefing on efforts to combat drug trafficking and improve the legal flow of goods and people across the border. Border Patrol agents have “a tough job” and deserve support, she said.

Harris’ visit was intended as a retort to Trump and his fellow Republicans, who have relentlessly attacked her over the Biden administration’s migration record and blamed the vice president for House has spent little time at the border.

Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only state bordering Mexico that suffered a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Voters favor Trump on migration, and Harris has gone on the offensive to improve her position on the issue and defuse a major political attack on her opponent.

She used her comments to question Trump’s own record on migration during his presidency, saying he did nothing to fix the legal immigration system or address an outdated asylum system. And she said he had failed to solve a shortage of immigration judges and border agents.

Harris recounted how a sweeping bipartisan package aimed at overhauling the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged Republicans to oppose it.

“Donald Trump tanked it,” she said, so he could campaign against disorder at the border.

“He prefers to address a problem rather than solve a problem,” Harris added. “And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than about playing political games and their personal political future.”

After immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that would ban migrants from receiving asylum if U.S. officials deem the southern border to be overwhelmed. Since then, the number of arrests for illegal border crossings has fallen.

Harris’ plan to surpass Biden’s efforts at the border would include tougher criminal charges for people who repeatedly cross the border illegally and require asylum claims to be made at ports of entry.

She used her trip to remind voters of her work as California’s attorney general in fighting crime along the border. She talked about helping to prosecute drug and human smuggling gangs that operated across borders and at the border.

The vice president’s visit to Douglas puts the issue of immigration in the biggest spotlight less than six weeks before Election Day.

Trump didn’t wait for her to get there before pushing back. He pointed to alleged data on criminals entering the US illegally on Friday in an attempt to link Harris to violent crimes committed by migrants. In a scathing tirade he said: ‘There is blood on her hands.’

“These are tough, tough, vicious criminals walking free in our country,” Trump said at a factory in Michigan.

Earlier this week, he told voters that “when Kamala speaks about the border, her credibility is less than zero.”

The Trump campaign has also responded with TV ads mocking the vice president as a failed “border czar.”

“Under Harris, more than 10 million are here illegally,” said one spot. However, estimates of how many people have entered the country illegally since the start of the Biden administration in 2021 vary widely.

Harris has also never held the position of border czar. Instead, its mission was to address the “root causes” of migration from three Central American countries – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – that were responsible for a significant share of border crossings.

As vice president, Harris has taken a long-term approach to an urgent problem, helping convince multinational corporations and Latin American companies to invest in the region. That, she argued, would create jobs and give locals more reasons to stay home rather than make the arduous trek north.

Yet Trump has continued to decry an “invasion” of border crossings.

Douglas, where Harris appeared, is a predominantly Democratic border town in Republican Party-dominated Cochise County, where Republicans on the Board of Supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results. Trump was in the area last month and used a remote stretch of border wall and a stack of steel beams to create a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.

The city of 16,000 has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy gateway that is in need of a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned about making legal border crossings more efficient as they are about combating illegal crossings.

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Cooper reported from Phoenix.