Harris, in visit to border, proposes new restrictions on immigration

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign on Friday proposed new border restrictions that would go further than the emergency rules the Biden administration deployed in June, making the announcement during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border Friday in an effort to confront one of her biggest political vulnerabilities.

Harris's proposed executive action would build on President Joe Biden's current policy of essentially closing the U.S. asylum system unless illegal border crossings stay below 1,500 daily crossings for a week. Harris would lower that threshold and extend the period it must be met, advisers said, although exact figures were not immediately available.

The action might have a 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 immigration posture than the administration in which she serves and that she is not ceding the issue to Donald Trump , who consistently scores higher marks among voters on border security and immigration.

In what her campaign had billed as a major speech in this community, which sits on the border, Harris also emphasized her support for an enforcement-heavy border security bill crafted by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year. She decried Trump's central role in derailing it , noting that he had urged Republicans in Congress to oppose the legislation.

Donald Trump tanked it," she said, standing amid six different signs that said in capital letters, "Border Security and Stability."

"Because, you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem," she added. "And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future."

Ahead of her visit, her campaign on Friday also released a new ad that will air in Arizona and other battleground states. "She will secure our border," the narrator states. "We need a real leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that's Kamala Harris."

Harris's decision to visit the border, as Trump attacks her forcefully on immigration and polls show voters trust him more on the issue, marks a stark effort to address a political weakness head-on. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), regularly criticize Democrats as being soft on immigration, and Biden has suffered politically from the scenes of chaos at the border that plagued his first three years in office.

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

Harris also faces danger signs in Arizona more broadly, where a Suffolk University/USA Today poll shows Trump with a 48 to 42 percent lead, although other polls have shown a tighter race.

Under Biden's emergency measures, migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally are ineligible to access the U.S. asylum system until Homeland Security officials determine that the average number of daily crossings has remained below 1,500 for seven consecutive days.

Harris will propose a lower daily threshold for crossings and says that it must be met for a longer period before opening the asylum system, according to a campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a plan that had not been formally announced. The official declined to provide specifics.

Harris arrived here on a sweltering Friday afternoon, touring the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Raul H. Castro Port of Entry. She received briefings on the agency's operations and on the progress agents have made in disrupting the flow of fentanyl through the border. She was joined by several state and federal officials, including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D).

Harris also toured the border wall, walking several feet away from it accompanied by two Border Patrol agents. The section of the wall she viewed was built between 2011 and 2012, during the Obama administration.

In her remarks, on the Douglas campus of Cochise College, the vice president recounted her record as California attorney general, saying she prosecuted transnational gangs and criminal organizations that smuggled drugs or trafficked humans and guns across the border.

She also argued that Border Patrol agents need more resources, and she promised that combating the flow of fentanyl across the border would be "a top priority" of her presidency. As part of that effort, she proposed adding new fentanyl-detection machines at ports of entry and said she would press the Chinese government to do more to crack down on companies that make chemicals used in fentanyl.

Harris spoke at some length about her time as attorney general of California, saying she made it a priority to prosecute transnational criminal gangs that trafficked in guns, drugs and human beings. She emphasized that as president, she would work with Republicans to devise "common-sense" solutions to the persistent problems at the border.

The vice president said she would surge support to law enforcement agencies on the border — adding more personnel, more training and more technology — and would also double the Department of Justice's budget for extraditing and prosecuting transnational organizations and cartels.

Those who enter the country unlawfully and do not make a legal asylum request at the border would be barred from reentering the country for five years.

While Harris sought to portray her current tough stand on the border as an extension of the work she has done over her career, it presents a sharp contrast with the tone she took as a presidential candidate in 2019, when she signaled a far more welcoming approach in contrast to Trump's hard-line measures.

In a reflection of the sharp shift in the political landscape since Biden took office, Harris focused almost entirely on securing the border, nodding only briefly to the longtime Democratic aim of providing a way for undocumented immigrants already in the country to become citizens.

"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. We can, and we must, do both. We must do both."

Trump has routinely unleashed harsh rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, promising detention camps and mass deportations and saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country."

At a rally in Pennsylvania last Monday, Trump referred to the immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio, saying, "You have to get them the hell out." Trump and Vance have previously — and falsely — claimed that immigrants in that town have been stealing and eating their neighbors' pets.

He criticized Harris's trip to the border earlier on Friday, saying during a news conference that "she should save her airfare." Trump repeated his longtime assertion that Biden could crack down on illegal immigration by using his executive powers rather than relying on legislation moving through Congress.

"She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border," Trump said. "He can do it with the signing of just a signature and a piece of paper to the Border Patrol."

Early in the Biden administration, the president assigned Harris to lead an effort to improve the economy and reduce corruption in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, in hopes that fewer residents of those countries would feel compelled to flee to the United States.

The task proved a political albatross for Harris, however. Although her mandate did not directly involve border crossings, Republicans began referring to her as the "border czar," seeking to link her to the border chaos that plagued the administration's first three years.

In June 2021, Harris visited Mexico and Guatemala at a time when the administration was urgently seeking to reduce illegal immigration, offering a stern warning to would-be migrants that was criticized by advocates. "Do not come," she said then . "You will be turned back."

In an interview with NBC host Lester Holt that same month, Holt noted that the vice president had not yet visited the U.S.-Mexico border and asked why.

Harris seemed to dismiss the question.And I haven't been to Europe," she shot back. "I don't understand the point that you're making."

The response was seen as a blunder even by some of Harris's allies. She visited the border later that month, traveling to El Paso for a 41⁄2-hour visit to tour border agency operations there.

On Friday's trip, she came to an area known for its struggles in containing large number of migrants. Along one 25-mile segment of new border wall between Douglas and Naco, Ariz., The Washington Post in 2022 counted 71 bollards with visible repairs and welds, used to patch over holes that had been cut as would-be immigrants sought to make their way into the United States.

In December, nearly 250,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, an all-time high. But the numbers have been down dramatically this year, largely due to increased enforcement in Mexico to intercept would-be crossers. Apprehensions in July were at 56,400, the lowest of any month since September 2020, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.