Kamala Harris (left); Donald Trump (right).
Credit: Reuters File Photos
Washington: For months, Republicans have pummeled Vice President Kamala Harris over the southern border, after years of high crossing numbers and headlines about immigrants overwhelming public services under the Biden administration.
On Friday, Harris will stop along a stretch of that 2,000-mile dividing line in the political battleground of Arizona, directly confronting an issue that polls show remains a major weakness for her. It will be her first visit to the border as a presidential candidate, and her first since 2021, when she was given the diplomatic mission of tackling the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Drawing attention to the border is a political risk: Former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have maligned and mischaracterized Harris' record on immigration. As vice president, she has sometimes done herself no favors on the issue, and even members of her own party panned her early efforts as clumsy. She drew criticism in particular for an interview three years ago in which she responded to a question about why she had not yet traveled to the border by saying, "I haven't been to Europe."
Now, the visit Friday could offer her a chance to neutralize her vulnerability on immigration, strike a contrast with Trump on both policy and tone -- and underscore that she is taking a tougher stance on border security than any other Democratic presidential candidate has in decades.
"For a long time, Democrats wouldn't take on an issue that they were being attacked on," said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who focuses on turning out Latino voters. "So her getting out there and saying, 'No, we can be a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws at the same time' is great strategy."
Harris' message is an attempt to strike a balance between a harder line at the border and her party's longtime pledges to expand legal pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally. Her campaign says she is meeting most Americans, especially swing and independent voters, where they are.
And she appears to believe she has found a way to negate Trump's criticisms of her: blaming him for helping kill a bipartisan deal in Congress this year that would have sharply narrowed the path to asylum and provided money for more immigration officials and technology to detect drug smugglers at the border.
On Friday, in the border community of Douglas, Arizona, Harris was expected to give a speech accusing Trump of playing politics with immigration and reaffirming her commitment to signing the border legislation. She was also likely to note that crossings have dropped significantly since President Joe Biden signed an executive order in June that prevented migrants from seeking asylum at the border when crossings surge.
At a news conference Thursday in New York, Trump questioned the political strategy of her visit and attacked her handling of the border.
"Why would she go to the border now, playing right into the hand of her opponent?" he asked, adding: "She keeps talking about how she supposedly wants to fix the border. We would merely ask: Why didn't she do it four years ago?"
If Harris were in another political climate or had different instincts, she might have chosen to make a point about immigration by traveling to Springfield, Ohio, where Trump and his allies falsely accused immigrants of stealing and eating their neighbors' cats and dogs, leading to bomb threats against schools and government buildings. Instead, she will stand at a border less chaotic and deluged with desperate migrants than it was a year ago, in a critical swing state where the issue is a top priority for many voters.
Voters have broadly grown less friendly to immigration. In July, a Gallup poll found that 55% of Americans would like to see less immigration to the United States, up from 41% the previous year. And many believe Trump is better on the border than Harris. In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of three Sun Belt states, including Arizona, 54% of likely voters said they trusted Trump more on immigration, compared with 43% for Harris.
In a Hispanic neighborhood in Phoenix, several residents said in interviews this week that they supported more border security and were worried about crime and gun violence in their communities.
Jose Nuñez, 22, said that he was leaning toward voting for Trump, but that he also appreciated Harris' tone on the border.
"As long as they're keeping the country safe," he said.
As Harris has moved right on immigration, Trump has intensified his attacks on immigrants and promised more restrictive policies than during his first term in office. He has called for mass deportations and detention camps, positions that Harris has criticized as inhumane. A nonpartisan analysis found that Trump's pledge to deport millions of immigrants would contribute to a decline in economic growth and spur inflation.
Even some progressive groups unhappy with Harris' tack on the border have endorsed her, reasoning that with her as president, there would at least be room for negotiation.
This month, more than 80 immigrant rights organizations sent a letter to Biden and Harris opposing the resurrection of the border security bill in the Senate that Trump helped sink. The groups said the proposal would inflict "irreparable harm" on the nation's asylum system, lead to more deaths at the border, and cause detention and deportation numbers to balloon.
"We will not allow any elected leader to treat immigrants, whether new arrivals or those who have been here for decades, as political pawns," the letter said.
The effort was led by United We Dream, the largest immigrant rights group led by young activists. And yet the group's political arm, United We Dream Action, endorsed Harris a few days later.
Bruna Bouhid-Sollod, the senior political director for United We Dream Action, said the group had made the decision after discussing the threats it saw a second Trump presidency posing for immigration, environmental protections and LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.
"We know they are not superheroes, and we know they are not the perfect candidates," Bouhid-Sollod said of Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
During Harris' time in the Senate, she was a fierce critic of Trump's immigration policies. When she ran for president in 2019, she emphasized the plight of the young immigrants known as Dreamers who were brought to the United States illegally as children.
This time around, she is highlighting her support for the bipartisan legislation. She has cut television ads pointing to her work prosecuting drug cartels and human smugglers as the attorney general of California, including a new spot released Friday in Arizona and other battleground states. And she has emphasized her endorsements from border-city mayors.
At the same time, she has said, without providing policy specifics, that she wants to encourage immigration and help those already in the United States.
"We must also reform our broken immigration system and protect our Dreamers and understand we can do both: create an earned pathway to citizenship and ensure our border is secure," Harris said this month at a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "We can do both and we must do both."
Some voters said they appreciated the middle ground she was occupying. June Benally, 64, of Glendale, Arizona, said border security was a top concern for her but that she found Trump's approach "absolutely heartless."
Still, Harris' words have disappointed some progressives.
Erika Andiola, a longtime immigrant rights activist in Arizona, said she had expected Harris to be a more vocal advocate for immigrants at a time when the political conversation about them tends to center on "who is a criminal."
"What I have tried to convey to the Harris campaign is -- yes, part of it is ensuring that they can win," Andiola said. "But they are also responsible for helping us shift the narrative around the immigrant community."
And Julian Iribe, 25, a voter in Phoenix, said he had hoped to see Harris take a "more lenient" stance toward immigrants.
"My dad's an immigrant," Iribe said. "I'm all about, you want to get here for a better life? Go for it."
Hearing tougher talk on the border from Harris made him less likely to vote for her in November, he said -- and had him considering casting a ballot for Trump, despite the former president's harsher message.
"It's like, either way, it's the same thing," Iribe said.