Harris pledges to crack down on illegal crossings as she challenges Trump on immigration

The vice president is looking to peel voters away from Trump by reminding them of how he opposed a tough border security bill earlier this year

In this screen grab from a television pool camera, Vice President Kamala Harris confers with a US Border Patrol officer along the US-Mexico border in Arizona (Reuters / Pool)

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday said the US government is duty-bound to “set rules at our border and to enforce them” as she called for reform of the American immigration system.

The immigration system should work “in an orderly way, that it is humane” and “makes our country stronger,” she said during a speech at Cochise College in Douglas, Arizona, after visiting the US border wall.

She also slammed her 2024 election opponent, former President Donald Trump, for commanding his Republican allies to vote against a bipartisan immigration and border reform package that experts said was stronger than any similar legislation considered by Congress in decades.

The vice president said the “dedicated agents” of the US Border Patrol and customs officers “need more resources to do their jobs,” which is why she supported the bipartisan legislation that would’ve provided funds to hire 1,500 more Border Patrol officers and purchase 100 machines to detect fentanyl at the border.

“It would have allowed us to more quickly and effectively remove those who come here illegally, and it would have increased the number of immigration judges and asylum officers. It was the strongest border security bill we have seen in decades. It was endorsed by the Border Patrol union, and it should be in effect today, producing results in real time right now for our country,” she said.

“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, and the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”

The vice president said the “dedicated agents” of the US Border Patrol and customs officers “need more resources to do their jobs” (AP)

Harris pledged that she would sign that exact same bill into law if it is passed by Congress and sent to her desk as president.

The vice president, who was making her first visit to the US-Mexico border as a candidate for the presidency, also promised to “reach across the aisle” and “embrace common sense approaches and new technologies to get the job done” if elected, citing her experience battling transnational criminal gangs and cartels as the attorney general of California.

She vowed to change America’s asylum rules to bar anyone who crosses between ports of entry into the US from seeking asylum on a permanent basis.

“Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from reentering for five years. 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, while we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States. Our system must be orderly and secure, and that is my goal,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Harris arrived at a site along the US border wall in Douglas, where she was greeted by a pair of uniformed officers from the US Border Patrol.

The two officers and the vice president chatted as they walked along a path next to a section of the wall, which was constructed during the Obama administration and is not part of the wall built during Trump’s presidency.

She also received a briefing from Customs and Border Protection officials on US efforts to prevent the introduction of fentanyl into the United States. Harris is later expected to announce support for further restricting how people can claim asylum if they enter the country unlawfully between ports of entry along the border with Mexico.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris talks with John Modlin, the chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, right, and Blaine Bennett, the U.S. Border Patrol Douglas Station border patrol agent in charge, as she visits the U.S. border with Mexico in Douglas, Arizona, on Friday (AP)

Harris told the crowd in Douglas that she’d make combatting the trafficking of the synthetic narcotic “a top priority” if she is sworn in as president next year.

The vice president’s visit to the border comes as she seeks to fight Trump on the key issue of his campaign. He rarely makes a public appearance without engaging in incendiary rhetoric on the subject, often crossing a line into outright racism.

Trump and his Republican allies have sought to attack Harris for the Biden administration’s record on migration and have attempted to brand her as a “failed border czar” because of her work handling diplomacy with countries that, until recently, accounted for a significant portion of the immigrants claiming asylum along the US-Mexico border.

But Harris said she would “put politics aside, to fix our immigration system and find solutions to problems which have persisted for far too long” if elected, including by enacting legislation to give so-called “Dreamers” brought to the US illegally as children — as well as “hardworking immigrants” who’ve been in the US “for years” a “path to citizenship.”

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris talks with John Modlin, the chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, right, as she visits the U.S. border with Mexico in Douglas, Ariz., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 (AP)

The vice president contrasted her approach with that of Trump, who she said “did nothing to fix our broken immigration system” during his time in office.

“He did not solve the shortage of immigration judges. He did not solve the shortage of border agents. He did not create lawful pathways into our nation, he did nothing to address an outdated asylum system and did not work with other governments in our hemisphere to deal with what clearly is also a regional challenge,” she said.

“As overdoses went up during his presidency, he fought to slash funding for the fight against fentanyl. And what did he do instead ... he separated families. He ripped toddlers out of their mother’s arms, put children in cages and tried to end protections for Dreamers. He made the challenges at the border worse, and he is still fanning the flames of fear and division.”

“That is not the work of a leader,” she added.

Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and one that contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Trump has an edge with voters on migration, and Harris has gone on offense to improve her standing on the issue and defuse a key line of political attack for Trump. 

In nearly every campaign speech she gives, Harris recounts how a sweeping bipartisan package aiming to overhaul the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged top Republicans to oppose it.

“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks previewed by her campaign. After the immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed.

Since then, arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen. Harris will also use her trip to remind voters about her work as attorney general of California in confronting crime along the border.

During an August rally in Glendale, outside Phoenix, she talked about helping to prosecute drug- and people-smuggling gangs that operated transnationally and at the border.

With additional reporting by agencies