Kamala Harris travels to Arizona to counter border criticism

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a city at the center of the country's immigration problems on Friday to lay out her vision for border security and combat attacks from former President Donald Trump.

Harris has just six weeks left to convince voters that she would do a better job on immigration than her Republican opponent, an issue that Arizonans cite as a major factor as they consider who they will vote for on March 5. should vote in November.

And right now, polls show that more voters say they trust Trump to tackle the problem more effectively than Harris.

“The purpose of her trip is to try to define or redefine the immigration narrative,” said Morgan Bailey, a lawyer who previously served as deputy chief of staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security. “It manages this really delicate political balancing act between border security and humanitarian challenges.”

Arizona is home to the busiest border corridor in the country and has the most heavily fortified stretch of border in the country.

Trump and Harris are engaged in a contentious race in the state where recent polls show a close battle with Trump gaining ground. Both campaigns view Arizona, with its 11 electoral votes, as a must-win battleground state.

Harris was named the Democratic nominee just last month, and in that time Trump has worked to define her immigration position in his own terms. Trump recently traveled to the Arizona-Mexico border to portray Harris as a “radical leftist” and link her to violent reports of migrant crime.

Now Harris will use the same Arizona county as a backdrop to self-define her views on immigration policy.

“Trump will continue to try to paint a picture of her as being meek when it comes to allowing individuals to enter the United States illegally,” Bailey said. “So it’s beneficial for them to speak out on these issues and be clear about what their policies and priorities are.”

Trump criticized Harris in a post

During her visit to Douglas, a border town of 15,500 in Cochise County, Harris plans to retaliate against Trump over his role in passing a bipartisan border bill that stalled in Congress earlier this year. Trump called on Republicans to block the bill to prevent President Joe Biden from winning the election.

“This bipartisan bill that she often references was derailed by her opponent. I think this suggests that Donald Trump and his allies like to address problems, not solutions,” said César Fierros, communications director for Arizona advocacy group Living United for Change. “That's something she's going to point out, and I think that's going to turn voters off even more once they're more informed about what Trump is actually trying to do on immigration.”

As Harris previewed her border trip, she vowed in a television interview to revive the legislation. She noted that it would have deployed 1,500 new border agents to the southern border, provided additional resources to block the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. and “put more resources into our ability to prosecute transnational criminal organizations.”

“We have a broken immigration system. And it needs to be fixed,” Harris said on MSNBC. “My promise is that if the American people want me, I will bring this bill back and sign it into law if I am elected president. And we need a comprehensive plan that includes what we need to do to not only fortify our border, but also deal with the fact that we need to create pathways for people to gain citizenship.”

Harris faces the challenge of satisfying the Democratic base with her immigration policies while appealing to the moderate voters and Republicans she is trying to win over with her campaign in Arizona. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, a Republican who praised Trump during the former president's border trip, said he had “mixed feelings” about Harris' visit coming so late in her tenure as vice president.

“Are we coming for political reasons or are we coming to actually fight a border that needs help?” Dannels said.

The Biden administration has made a rightward shift on immigration policy over the past three years. Most recently, Biden signed an executive order in June that imposed new asylum restrictions at the southern border.

As her campaign takes shape, Harris has faced questions about her views on immigration, including her previous promise to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, known as “Dreamers.”

Still, Harris' immigration policies stand in stark contrast to Trump, who has promised to carry out mass deportations if he returns to the White House and made false claims about migrants eating pets in Ohio.

Harris' focus on reinstating bipartisan immigration legislation was welcome news to some border experts in Arizona.

“We have to wait and see if they bring this bill back and if there are any changes. But there were a lot of provisions in it that we liked,” said Luis Ramírez Thomas, president of Ramírez Advisors International, a government affairs and economic development firm that describes itself as specializing in “cross-border business solutions.”

“Additional funding for customs staff, there was some funding for infrastructure,” he said. “Was it the ideal bill to meet everyone’s needs? No, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.”

During her time in the state, Harris will go to the Raul H. Castro Port of Entry to receive official briefings on operations and progress toward disrupting the flow of fentanyl across the southern border.

Fierros, the LUCHA spokesman, said he hopes Harris takes a broader view of immigration in her remarks.

“We don’t want to just focus so much on what’s happening at the border or border security,” Fierros said. “But also the fact that this country has a long history of positive contributions that immigrants have made to this country, and also the fact that there is a great need for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship.”

Kamala Harris travels to Arizona to counter border criticism

ByVanessa

By Vanessa

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