Hours after making her first trip as a presidential candidate to America’s southern border, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a plan to build on the Biden administration’s set of executive actions that helped reduce record-high illegal immigration, as well as a pledge to increase resources to stop fentanyl trafficking at legal ports of entry.
The move appears designed to shore up Harris’ perceived weakness among polled voters on the southern border, where she has been seen as less capable of handling immigration than former President Donald Trump, who she slammed as a someone who sought to play “political games.”
What You Need To Know
- Vice President Kamala Harris pledged a handful of immigration reform and enforcement actions on Friday in an Arizona border community as part of an effort to shore up a weakness among voters who see her as less capable on immigration than former President Donald Trump
- Harris pledged to beef up law enforcement and prosecution with increased hiring, as well as increased equipment for agents to combat smuggling
- The vice president also said she would seek to streamline the asylum process, protect undocumented immigrant adults brought to the U.S. as children and build a pathway to citizenship for well-qualified undocumented immigrants with long-standing, deep ties to their communities
- Trump, who has made immigration central to his electoral hopes, attacked Harris on Friday, saying she is responsible for the U.S. becoming a “dumping ground” for “convicted criminals from all over the world”
“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 He did nothing to address an outdated asylum system, and did not work with other governments in our hemisphere to deal with what clearly is also a regional challenge,” Harris said in Douglas, Arizona, a community just off the border with Mexico. “As overdoses went up during his presidency, he fought to slash funding for the fight against fentanyl. He made the challenges at the border worse, and he is still fanning the flames of fear and division.”
Her stance, she insisted, is one of nuance.
“I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”
To that end, Harris unveiled two sets of of planned actions on border enforcement and immigration reform. On enforcement, Harris pledged to continue Biden administration rules to bar undocumented border crossers from receiving asylum, as well as a promise to arrest, deport and impose a five-year ban on migrants who have crossed “between ports of entry.”
On reform, Harris said that she wants to create an “earned pathway to citizenship” for longtime immigrants, including “undocumented immigrants who are deeply rooted in the United States,” asking Congress to create a “clear process for vetting, qualifying and recognizing” candidates for that pathway. She also promised to protect Dreamers — grown immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — and to hire more asylum officers and expand processing centers to help clear the backlog of asylum claims.
“The United States is a sovereign nation, and I believe we have a duty to set rules at our border and to enforce them, and I take that responsibility very seriously,” Harris said. “We are also a nation of immigrants … we must reform our immigration system to ensure that it works in an orderly way, that it is humane. And that it makes our country stronger.”
Harris leaned on her past as the Attorney General of California, saying that she’s no stranger to border issues. Then-Attorney General Harris celebrated collaborations with federal law enforcement that led to arrests for gang leaders and members, drug busts and broken prescription pill rings. Her office also released a forward-looking report on transnational gangs that showcased successes and recommendations to cut down on crime.
“I saw the violence and chaos that transnational criminal organizations cause and the heartbreak and loss from the spread of their illicit drugs,” walking through sophisticated operations “making very clear that it is about an enterprise that is making a whole lot of money in the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings.”
Now-presidential candidate Harris on Friday pledged to double federal law enforcement budgets — including U.S. Marshals, federal prosecutors, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI to prosecute cartels and gang and impose higher sentences on human traffickers.
Harris also promised to work with Congress to boost Border Patrol staffing, and to equip Border Patrol officers with inspection systems to scan and detect fentanyl at points of entry along the border, as well as ports of entry at airports and seaports, saying that America “must materially and sustainably disrupt the flow of illicit fentanyl coming into our country.”
The approach she mentions leverages the fact that the greatest volume of fentanyl smuggling takes place at legal ports of entry, with about 90% of all fentanyl seized by federal officers at border crossings. And, despite the arguments and suggestions made by Trump during his rallies, U.S. citizens have made up 80% of fentanyl traffickers convicted in southwestern border districts over the five years from 2018 to 2023.
Trump’s presidency did make the opioid overdose crisis a point of emphasis, boosting federal funding for drug treatment. And, as president, Trump pressured China on opioid regulation. But Trump also sought to cut the budget of federal agencies responsible for coordinating response to the opioid crisis, and federal auditors at the Government Accountability Office raked his Office of National Drug Control Policy for failing to adequately plan and implement strategies for the opioid crisis.
The former president has made the border his greatest point of emphasis during the campaign, repeatedly hammering the Biden-Harris administration for high illegal immigration statistics, though Border Patrol encounters have fallen and stayed low since January. It was even Trump’s leading topic during his Friday afternoon speech in Michigan, where he directly blamed Harris for immigration, calling the U.S. a “dumping ground” for “convicted criminals from all over the world.” He has repeatedly attacked immigrants themselves, as well, including legal Haitian immigrants living in Ohio. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, helped to spread false rumors that Haitian migrants are killing and eating pets, even as local officials said the claims were baseless.
Harris also decried Trump’s hand in blocking the Senate’s border security bill, which would have funded many of the hiring, prosecution, enforcement and equipment pledges she made Friday.
“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,” Harris said. “But Donald Trump tanked it … because, you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
Harris is expected to attend campaign fundraisers in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the weekend, while her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, attends a college football matchup between Minnesota and Michigan, in Michigan. Meanwhile, Trump will hold campaign events in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, attends an event in Newtown, Pennsylvania on Saturday.
