Harris touts ‘border security and stability’ at Arizona campaign stop

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — 

Amid relentless criticism from former President Trump that she is accountable for out-of-control unlawful immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday made her first go to to the U.S.-Mexico border since 2021, asserting extra stringent measures she would take as president to limit border entry.

“The US is a sovereign nation, and I imagine now we have an obligation to set guidelines at our border, and to implement them,” Harris instructed a crowd in Douglas, Ariz., gathered in a small auditorium at Cochise Faculty Douglas Campus, the place the stage was flanked by massive indicators that learn, “Border safety and stability.” “We’re additionally a nation of immigrants. The US has been enriched by generations of people that have come from each nook of the world to contribute to our nation and to change into a part of the American story.”

Harris mentioned she would transcend Biden administration insurance policies to additional prohibit border entry exterior of official ports of entry.

Earlier within the afternoon, Harris visited a port of entry lower than 10 miles from the marketing campaign occasion. Two Border Patrol brokers walked together with her alongside the towering fence, which was constructed throughout the Obama administration. Harris later instructed reporters that she had thanked them for his or her work.

“They’ve bought a troublesome job and so they want, rightly, assist to do their job. They’re very devoted,” she mentioned. “And so I’m right here to speak with them about what we will proceed to do to assist them.”

She advocated for hiring extra officers and including extra fentanyl detection methods at border entry factors.

“I reject the false alternative that counsel we should both select between securing our border or making a system of immigration that’s protected, orderly and humane,” Harris mentioned. “We are able to and we should do each.”

Immigration reform has bedeviled presidents of each events for many years.

A bipartisan proposal earlier this 12 months that mixed elevated funding for border safety and international assist for Ukraine seemed to be the primary breakthrough till it was derailed when Trump urged Republicans to oppose it.

That deal fell wanting complete plans mentioned for many years that might revamp the asylum system and the authorized immigration course of and supply a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million folks within the nation with out authorized authorization, together with those that arrived as youngsters. Harris on Friday talked about farm employees and immigrants who arrived as youngsters, often called “Dreamers.”

“As president, I’ll put politics apart to repair our immigration system and discover options to issues which have continued for much too lengthy,” Harris mentioned.

Prematurely of Harris’ go to to the border, Trump pointed to studies that there are greater than 425,000 convicted criminals who’re within the nation illegally however not detained by federal authorities, based on knowledge supplied by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to a lawmaker’s request.

That features greater than 13,000 convicted of murder and greater than 15,800 convicted of sexual assault, based on the ICE data shared on X, previously Twitter, by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).

Trump mentioned Thursday that 21 million folks entered the nation illegally in simply the final 4 years. He framed the bipartisan effort that he helped defeat as “her atrocious border bill.”

“It was not a border invoice. It was an amnesty invoice … ,” he mentioned at a information convention in Manhattan. “Luckily Congress was too good for it.”

The invoice wouldn’t have supplied a path to citizenship for individuals who lack authorized standing.

The GOP nominee’s look at Trump Tower was harking back to his 2015 marketing campaign announcement there, notably his references to different nations purposefully sending criminals to the USA.

His remarks included a number of falsehoods, resembling saying Harris permitted a raft of modifications to the nation’s immigration insurance policies that as vp she had no management over, and that she was the Biden administration’s “border czar.” She had been charged with making an attempt to enhance circumstances in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to cease these nations’ residents from fleeing their homelands.

That project has been a political headache for Harris — drawing criticism from the left and proper.

In a 2021 visit to Central America, Harris instructed would-be migrants that they’d be deported in the event that they crossed the border, angering allies of immigrants who mentioned they have been fleeing poverty, corruption and violence.

“Don’t come,” she mentioned on the time. “You’ll be turned again.”

On the identical journey, Harris laughed off questions in a nationally televised interview about why she had not but visited the border as vp, inflaming critics on the fitting.

Each political events are hyper-focused on immigration as a result of whereas the presidential race may be very tight within the polling, Trump has a double-digit edge on the difficulty of border safety. That edge has narrowed, nevertheless, since President Biden decided not to seek reelection and Harris garnered the support to change into the Democratic presidential nominee.

Border stops hit a file in December, with brokers making almost 250,000 arrests. Because the political drawback raged, Biden signed an order in June to heavily restrict asylum claims, prompting a pointy drop in border encounters, to fewer than 60,000 in July and August.

Republicans have been hammering the difficulty, with GOP members of Congress submitting a decision that “strongly condemns the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to safe the USA border” in the future after the president introduced he wouldn’t search reelection.

Whereas among the former president and his allies’ claims are demonstrably false and have been denounced by GOP elected officers, resembling allegations that Haitian migrants are consuming pets in Springfield, Ohio, issues amongst some voters concerning the impression of an insecure border on the financial system, crime and the fentanyl disaster are palpable in lots of communities.

Friday’s go to was Harris’ second to Arizona since she turned the Democratic presidential nominee, based on the Harris-Walz marketing campaign. Whereas Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and others have swung via the southwestern battleground state, Harris has targeted a lot of her in-person campaigning in essential states farther east, resembling Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.

Hours earlier than the vp landed in Arizona, Republicans held a press name that includes two moms whose daughters have been raped and killed by immigrants who have been within the nation illegally and the mom of a teenage son who overdosed on fentanyl. The ladies lambasted Harris for the administration’s immigration coverage and for visiting the border so near the election.

“I’m making an attempt very laborious to not cry. We reside 1,800 miles away from the border,” mentioned Patty Morin, the mom of Rachel Morin, a mom of 5 who was brutally attacked whereas strolling a bucolic and well-traveled public path in Maryland. Her physique was found in a drain pipe.

“Nobody is protected in America, nobody is protected. If in case you have a sanctuary metropolis in your state, you’re not protected,” she mentioned. “They’ve bused, flown, educated unlawful immigrants to actually each nook and cranny and each tiny city in the entire of the USA.”

Such fears are among the many causes the Harris marketing campaign launched an advert about immigration in Arizona on Friday, and visited the Southern border lower than a month and a half earlier than election day. As vp, she beforehand visited the area as soon as in 2021, when she toured the port of entry and border operation in El Paso.

Mehta reported from Phoenix and Pinho reported from Douglas. Occasions workers writers Noah Bierman and Andrea Castillo contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.