WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is ready to make her first go to to the southern border since she jumped into the 2024 race, with plans to assault former President Donald Trump on a problem that is central to his marketing campaign.
Harris is scheduled to go to a border city in Arizona on Friday, her marketing campaign introduced Wednesday. A marketing campaign aide stated she is going to spotlight Trump’s position in sinking a bipartisan border deal on Capitol Hill this yr.
Immigration and border safety are a weak spot for Harris. Polling continuously signifies that she trails Trump on the difficulty, and Trump repeatedly bashes her file within the Biden administration.
Her marketing campaign is trying to spotlight her earlier work on the difficulty whereas additionally portray Trump as “harmful.”
“As a former Attorney General from a border state, she took on worldwide gangs and felony organizations who site visitors medicine, weapons, and human beings, and she or he has lengthy believed we want an immigration system that’s safe, truthful, orderly and humane, a stark distinction from the divisive and harmful politics of Donald Trump,” a Harris marketing campaign aide stated in an announcement concerning the go to.
Harris will talk about “how she is pushing the hardest bipartisan border safety plan in a technology,” the aide stated.
When Harris discusses border and immigration points on the marketing campaign path, she usually factors to Trump’s pushing congressional Republicans to squash a bipartisan border safety invoice that may have addressed most of the points he criticizes.
The measure would have allowed the White House to shut the border if too many migrants tried to cross, and it could have raised the “credible concern” normal for asylum declare interviews, funding extra border brokers and deportation flights.
“Donald Trump acquired phrase of the invoice, realized it was going to repair an issue he needed to run on and informed them to kill the invoice, don’t put it up for a vote,” Harris stated Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. “He killed a invoice that may have really been an answer, as a result of he desires to run on an issue, as an alternative of fixing an issue.”
Harris has promised that if elected, she would revive the invoice and signal it into legislation.
Trump has made the border and immigration a centerpiece of his pitch for the presidency, making a number of visits to the southern border in the course of the marketing campaign. He additionally has a historical past of utilizing degrading language to explain migrants, calling them “animals,” evaluating them to the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter and arguing baselessly that they’re taking “Black jobs.” In current days, he has unfold lies about Haitian immigrants residing legally in Springfield, Ohio.
Trump has characterised Harris in speeches as weak on the border. He stated Tuesday on Truth Social that Harris was going to the border “for political causes.”
“She’s attempting to con the general public like she did a great job on the Border when, actually, she has destroyed the very cloth of our Nation,” he stated in a publish that additionally misstated the variety of migrants getting into the nation.
Friday’s go to to Douglas, Arizona, might be Harris’ second journey to the southern border throughout her time period as vice chairman. Her first journey was to El Paso, Texas, in June 2021.
An NBC News ballot carried out this month discovered that 54% of registered voters thought Trump would higher deal with securing the border and controlling immigration, in contrast with 33% who stated the identical of Harris.
At the identical time, the ballot indicated that 57% of registered voters thought Harris could be higher at treating immigrants humanely and defending immigrant rights, with 29% saying Trump could be higher.
NBC News reported in August that shelters on the southern border and in some main cities skilled sharp declines in migrants looking for shelter over the previous a number of months. Border Patrol brokers in June apprehended the bottom month-to-month variety of migrants crossing the southern border since President Joe Biden took workplace.