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Vice
President
Harris
waves
after
being
greeted
by Sen.
Mark
Kelly,
D-Ariz.,
as she
departs
for a
trip to
the
U.S.-Mexico
border
from
Joint
Base
Andrews
in
Maryland
on Sept.
27,
2024.
Kevin
Lamarque/Pool/AFP |
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Harris
visits
border
amid
political
fight
over
immigration
By Matt
Viser
4–5
minutes
Vice
President
Kamala
Harris
is
scheduled
to call
for
tougher
border
security
measures
on
Friday
during a
visit to
the
southern
border,
a trip
that
amounts
to her
latest
attempt
to
directly
confront
some of
her
biggest
political
vulnerabilities.
In what
her
campaign
is
billing
as a
major
speech
in
Douglas,
Ariz.,
Harris
is
planning
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
plans to
say,
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
states.
“We need
a real
leader
with a
real
plan to
fix the
border.
And
that’s
Kamala
Harris.”
Harris’s
decision
to visit
the
border,
as Trump
attacks
her
forcefully
on
immigration
and
polls
show
voters
trust
him more
on the
issue,
marks a
stark
effort
to
address
a
political
vulnerability
head-on.
Trump
and his
running
mate,
Sen. JD
Vance
(R-Ohio),
regularly
criticize
Democrats
as being
insufficiently
tough on
immigration,
and
President
Joe
Biden
has
suffered
politically
from
scenes
of chaos
at the
border,
although
crossings
have
fallen
in
recent
months.
During
her trip
Friday,
Harris
plans to
say
forcefully
that
America
needs to
enforce
its laws
on the
border,
according
to a
campaign
official.
She will
also
recount
her
record
as
California
attorney
general,
saying
she
prosecuted
transnational
gangs
and
criminal
organizations
that
smuggled
drugs or
trafficked
humans
and guns
across
the
border.
She will
also
visit
Border
Patrol
agents
and
argue
that
they
need
more
resources,
and will
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 ports
of entry
at the
border
and will
press
the
Chinese
government
to do
more to
crack
down on
companies
that
make
chemicals
used in
fentanyl.
“We do
have a
broken
immigration
system.
And it
needs to
be
fixed,”
the vice
president
said
during
an
interview
Wednesday
with
MSNBC.
She
cited
the
bipartisan
border
bill,
which
would
have
significantly
increased
the
number
of
border
agents.
“Donald
Trump
got word
of the
bill,
realized
it was
going to
fix a
problem
he
wanted
to run
on, and
told
them to
kill the
bill,
don’t
put it
up for a
vote,”
Harris
said.
“He
killed a
bill
that
would
have
actually
been a
solution,
because
he wants
to run
on a
problem
instead
of
fixing a
problem.”
She said
that if
she is
elected,
she
would
bring
that
legislation
back and
attempt
to pass
it. In a
reflection
of the
sharp
shift in
the
political
landscape
since
Biden
took
office,
Harris
focused
almost
entirely
on
securing
the
border,
nodding
only
briefly
to the
longtime
Democratic
aim of
providing
a way
for
undocumented
immigrants
already
in the
country
to
become
citizens.
“We need
a
comprehensive
plan
that
includes
what we
need to
do to
fortify
not only
our
border,
but deal
with the
fact
that we
also
need to
create
pathways
for
people
to earn
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
have to
get them
the hell
out.”
Trump
and
Vance
have
previously
— and
falsely
—
claimed
that
immigrants
in the
town
have
been
stealing
and
eating
their
neighbors’
pets.
Early in
the
Biden
administration,
Harris
was
tasked
with
leading
diplomatic
efforts
to
tackle
the
“root
causes”
of
immigration
by
improving
conditions
in El
Salvador,
Guatemala
and
Honduras.
Although
her
mandate
did not
involve
current
border
crossings,
Republicans
began
referring
to her
as the
“border
czar”
and
sought
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.
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