Kamala Harris proposes new immigration restrictions on border visit

Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign on Friday proposed new border restrictions that would go beyond the emergency rules the Biden administration put in place in June, announcing it during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday in an effort to address one of the country’s biggest political vulnerabilities.

Harris’ proposed executive action would build on President Joe Biden’s current policy, which essentially shuts down the U.S. asylum system if illegal border crossings do not stay below 1,500 daily crossings for a week. Harris would lower that threshold and extend the period in which it must be met, the aides said, although exact numbers were not immediately available.

The move could have limited practical impact, at least in the short term, but the proposal appeared designed to send a message that Harris is taking a more assertive stance on immigration than the administration she serves in and is not bowing to Donald Trump on the issue. who consistently gets higher marks among voters on border security and immigration.

In what his campaign described as an important speech in this border community, Harris also emphasized her support for a strong border security bill drafted earlier this year by a bipartisan group of senators.. He decried Trump’s central role in derailing it, noting that he had urged Republicans in Congress to oppose the legislation.

“Donald Trump has failed,” she said as she stood amid six different signs that read in capital letters: “Border Security and Stability.” “Because, as you can see, he prefers to campaign with the problem rather than solve it,” he added. “And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and his personal political future.”

Ahead of his visit, his campaign also released a new Friday ad that will air in Arizona and other battleground states. “He will protect our border,” says the narrator. “We need a real leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that’s Kamala Harris.”

Harris’ decision to visit the border at a time when Trump is strongly attacking it over immigration and polls show voters trust him more on the issue is a clear effort to address political weakness head-on. Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) regularly criticize Democrats for being soft on immigration, and Biden has suffered politically from the border scenes that plagued his first three years in office.

Biden has worked with Mexico to stop migrants and limit their access to the asylum system if they enter illegally, causing illegal border crossings to drop to their lowest level in four years. But the issue remains politically powerful for Republicans: A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 44 percent of voters have more confidence in Trump to handle immigration, while 33 percent trust Harris.

Harris also faces danger in Arizona overall, where a Suffolk University/USA Today poll shows Trump leading 48 percent to 42 percent, though other polls have shown a tighter race.

Under Biden’s emergency measures Migrants who cross the US border illegally are not eligible to enter the US asylum system until Homeland Security officials found that the average number of daily crossings remained below 1,500 for seven consecutive days.

Harris will propose a lower daily threshold for crossings and says it must be met over a longer period of time before the asylum system opens, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the plan, which has not been formally announced. The official declined to provide details.

Harris arrived here on a steamy Friday afternoon and toured the Raúl H. Castro port of entry at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He was briefed on the agency’s operations and the progress agents have made in disrupting the flow of fentanyl across the border. She was accompanied by several state and federal officials, including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D).

Harris also walked along the border wall and walked a few meters away from it, accompanied by two Border Patrol agents. The part of the wall you saw was built between 2011 and 2012, during the Obama administration. In her remarks at the Cochise College campus in Douglas, the vice president recounted her career as California attorney general, saying she prosecuted transnational gangs and criminal organizations that smuggle drugs or traffic people and weapons across borders.

He also argued that Border Patrol agents need more resources and vowed to make combating the flow of fentanyl across the border the “top priority” of his presidency. As part of that effort, he proposed adding new fentanyl screening machines at ports of entry and said he would push the Chinese government to do more to crack down on companies that make the chemicals used in fentanyl.

Harris spoke at length about her time as California attorney general, saying she made it a priority to go after transnational criminal gangs that traffic in guns, drugs and people. She stressed that as president she would work with Republicans to come up with “common sense” solutions to the ongoing border problems.

The vice president said she would increase support for border law enforcement (adding more staff, more training, and more technology) and would also double the Justice Department’s budget for extradition and prosecution of multinational organizations and cartels. Those who enter the country illegally and fail to make a legal claim for asylum at the border will not be able to re-enter the country for five years.

While Harris has tried to present her current tough stance on the border as an extension of the work she has done throughout her career, it stands in stark contrast to the tone she took as a presidential candidate in 2019, when signaled a much more accommodating approach in contrast to Trump’s tough measures.

Reflecting major changes in the political landscape since Biden took office, Harris focused almost entirely on border security and gave only a brief nod to the Democratic Party’s long-standing goal of giving undocumented immigrants already in the country the chance to become citizens.

“I reject the false dilemma that suggests we must choose between securing our border or creating an immigration system that is safe, orderly and humane. We can and must do both. We have to do both.” Trump has consistently unleashed harsh rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, promising internment camps and mass deportations and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Last Monday at the Pennsylvania convention, Referring to immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, Trump said, “We have to get them out of here once and for all.. Trump and Vance have already claimed — and falsely — that immigrants in this city have been stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

On Friday, he criticized Harris’ trip to the border, saying during a news conference that “she should keep her ticket.” Trump repeated his long-standing claim that Biden could crack down on illegal immigration using his executive powers, rather than relying on legislation passed by Congress.

“She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border,” Trump said. “You can do it with just a signature and a piece of paper addressed to the Border Patrol. At the beginning of the Biden administration, The president appointed Harris to lead efforts to improve the economy and reduce corruption in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.in the hope that fewer residents of these countries will feel compelled to flee to the United States.

However, the assignment proved to be a political liability for Harris. Although her tenure did not directly involve border crossings, Republicans began referring to her as the “border czar” in an attempt to link her to the border chaos that plagued the administration for the first three years.

In June 2021, Harris visited Mexico and Guatemala amid an urgent government push to curb illegal immigration, offering a stark warning to would-be migrants that advocates criticized. “Don’t go,” he said then. “They will reject them.

In an interview with NBC anchor Lester Holt that same month Holt noted that the vice president has yet to visit the US-Mexico border and asked why. Harris seemed to dismiss the question. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” he replied. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. The response was considered a mistake even by some Harris allies. She visited the border later that month, traveling to El Paso for a four-and-a-half-hour visit to border agencies there.

On Friday’s trip, he arrived in an area known for its difficulties in detaining large numbers of migrants. Along a 25-kilometer segment of the new border wall between Douglas and Naco, Arizona, The Washington Post counted in 2022 71 bollards with visible repairs and welding used to plug holes opened when would-be migrants tried to enter the US.

Nearly 250,000 migrants were apprehended at the US-Mexico border in December, a record high. But the numbers have fallen sharply this year, largely because of increased surveillance in Mexico to catch those trying to cross. According to US Customs and Border Protection, 56,400 people were arrested in July, the lowest number for any month since September 2020.