With fewer than 40 days left until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is passing through Arizona to make her pitch to critical swing state voters.
She first acknowledged the devastating Hurricane Helene that was moving across the eastern United States, before diving into her remarks in Douglas, Ariz., on Friday evening.
“So Arizona, I think you all know, and this is why you are here,” Harris said. “There are consequential issues at stake in this election, and one is the security of our border.”
This is Harris’ first border visit since her trip to El Paso, Texas, in 2021. The vice president has often received criticism for ignoring the problems at the southern border. Her latest visit was a chance to address one of her biggest vulnerabilities in the 2024 presidential election. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., accompanied her to the border.
She said she spoke to border patrol agents at the port of entry in Douglas, who told her they need more resources to secure the southern border. “That’s why last December, I helped raise the rate of overtime pay for border agents, and also why I strongly supported the comprehensive border security bill written last year.”
This bipartisan border legislation would have allowed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hire more agents, install fentanyl inspection machines, and increase the number of immigration judges and asylum officers.
“But Donald Trump tanked it. He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said, ‘Stop the bill,’ because, you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said. She pledged to bring back that bill and sign it into law, if elected.
What is Kamala Harris proposing for the border?
Harris proposed stricter asylum laws during her remarks, like apprehending migrants who cross the border between the legal ports of entry. Those individuals “will be apprehended and removed and barred from reentering for five years,” she said.
“We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators, and if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum.”
Harris promised to hand over state-of-the-art fentanyl-detecting technology to seaports and airports and to double the resources for the Department of Justice to pursue transnational criminal organizations and cartels.
She also called for targeting “the entire global fentanyl supply chain” by demanding that China “crack down on the companies that make those chemicals.”
Harris also rejected the notion that legal immigration reform that is “orderly and humane” can’t go hand in hand with securing the border: “We can and we must do both.”
Republicans react to Kamala Harris border visit
Former President Donald Trump, at a campaign event Thursday, slammed Harris for perpetuating the overwhelming crisis at the border.
“For nearly four years, we have been living through the worst border crisis in the history of the world,” Trump said at Trump Tower in New York, as The Hill reported.
“There’s never been anything like it, which has brought untold suffering, misery, and death upon our land. The architect of this destruction is Kamala Harris,” he said.
Trump cited data on immigrants crossing the border who have criminal histories. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, had requested the numbers of these migrants crossing the border. He received a letter from a senior official at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The letter, posted on Gonzales’ X account, states that as of July 2024, more than 662,000 noncitizens have criminal histories on ICE’s national docket. More than 13,000 migrants have a homicide on their record, per his tweet.
Ahead of Harris’ arrival, the National Border Council Patrol, which endorsed Trump in the 2020 election, issued a statement critical of Harris.
“After years of not just ignoring the problem, but helping create it, Vice President Kamala Harris is finally headed down to the border.
“This is nothing more than for her to check the box, but what it is in reality is a slap in the face towards the men and women that put their lives on the line every day, and also a slap in the face to the American public,” the statement, obtained by Fox News, said. “Where has she been?”
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., also traveled to the border on Friday to show voters the reality “instead of cleaned up fake rhetorical border,” in a video he posted on X. “We’re east of a place called Sasabe, which is a port of entry,” he said, noting he could see part of the wall built at the southern border under the Trump administration.
He continued, “Good grief, it’s still a crisis. You had over 158,000 encounters last month.”
In another post, Biggs said Harris’ visit was simply “a photo op.”
