Kari Lake responds to Kamala Harris border visit, rebukes VP and Ruben Gallego on crime, jobs
U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake on Saturday belittled Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to the Arizona-Mexico border, saying she spent just 20 minutes at one of the key sources of nationwide crime and economic pain.
A day after Harris received national coverage of plans she outlined in Douglas to address border security and immigration reforms, Lake sought to use the occasion to revisit the central theme of her own campaign.
Lake, the Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, rejected every aspect of Harris' proposals, which included the bipartisan border security bill negotiated in part by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and reiterated the need to complete the border wall favored by former President Donald Trump.
"She came into town to stand beside the border that she has torn open to stand there and look down at her feet, I hope in embarrassment," Lake said at a news conference in Phoenix.
"I hope she had some shame for what she has done not only to Arizona but this entire beautiful country. Kamala Harris has been an abject failure when it comes to the border."
Lake also hurled broadsides at her opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., claiming "he does not believe in securing our border and neither does Kamala Harris."
Hannah Goss, a spokeswoman for Gallego's campaign, called Lake "a power-hungry liar who will do anything to gain power."
"When there was a bipartisan deal to address the border crisis on the table, she opposed it, ignoring the wishes of the Border Patrol agents who supported the bill," Goss said. "Meanwhile, Ruben Gallego is a Marine combat veteran whose number one priority is securing our border and keeping Arizonans safe, which is why he is fighting tirelessly to hire more Border Patrol agents, fix our broken asylum system, crack down on fentanyl trafficking, and invest in proven technology - all to increase our border security."
She went on to claim the job gains in the Biden administration has not benefited Americans.
"Every job loss under these two buffoons has been a loss for American-born citizens," Lake said. "And under these two buffoons, every job gain has gone to foreign-born citizens."
Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that foreign-born workers in the U.S. have gained about 6 million jobs during Biden's tenure, about the same number as native-born workers in that time.
The pandemic complicates similar comparisons for Trump, but at the peak of employment growth for the different groups before the nationwide quarantine, foreign-born workers grew by about 2 million and native-born workers grew by 7 million.
Lake blamed the spike in illegal immigration during the Biden administration for violent crime.
To underscore the stakes as she sees them, Lake cited figures provided to Congress this week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE claimed that 13,099 immigrants were convicted of homicides in the U.S. or abroad; 15,811 were convicted rapists and more than 425,000 were convicted criminals of some kind overall.
Asked whether she could estimate how many homicides involving illegal immigrants happened in metro Phoenix or Arizona, Lake said crime figures reported by the FBI are not reliable.
"Those FBI crime stats, which in some ways would show some of the crime possibly going down, many — numerous, the majority of major cities — have just stopped reporting their crime stats to the FBI, so now the FBI crime stats mean nothing."
Harris' visit Friday to Douglas addressed one of the biggest attack lines Trump and his Republican allies have used against her.
They derisively refer to her as the "border czar," using a term the media used to describe an assignment from Biden for Harris to determine the "root causes" of migration largely from Central American countries.
During her Friday visit, Harris reiterated her support for measures such as the border security bill that died without a vote when Trump persuaded congressional Republicans to oppose the bill to avoid handing Biden an election year legislative triumph. Harris said Trump had shown no leadership or interest in solving the matter by letting that bill fail.
But she also went beyond that, saying she would effectively extend Biden's June executive order limiting asylum claims and she called for immigration reforms, such as providing a pathway to citizenship for those brought to America as minors.
For his part, Gallego has said he also supported passage of the border security bill and has reframed his rhetoric on conditions along the border since entering the Senate race in early 2023.
He now calls the situation a "crisis." In a July 2023 interview with Washington Monthly, Gallego downplayed problems in border communities.
"Just because a portion of this country has a problem, we don't call that whole area a mess," he said then.
The border has long seemed a political millstone for Democrats, a place where the party splinters on policy and the results are out of step with broad public opinion.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center released new survey data Friday that found 96% of Trump supporters and 80% of Harris supporters want increased border security.
Nearly 90% of Trump supporters favor the kind of mass deportations for illegal immigrants that Trump is promising in a second term, as do 27% of Harris supporters.
