Stephanie Murray Arizona Republic
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a city at the heart of the nation’s immigration issues on Friday to pitch her vision for border security and combat attacks from former President Donald Trump.
Harris has just six weeks left to convince voters she’d do a better job with immigration than her Republican opponent, an issue Arizonans name as a top factor as they consider who to vote for on Nov. 5.
And right now, polls show that more voters say they trust Trump to handle the issue more effectively than Harris.
“The purpose for her trip is to attempt to define, or redefine, the immigration narrative,” said Morgan Bailey, an attorney who previously served as deputy chief of staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. “She's walking this really fine political tightrope of border security versus humanitarian challenges.”
Arizona is home to the nation’s busiest border corridor and has the most fortified stretch of border in the country.
Trump and Harris are locked in a contentious race in the state, where the latest polls show a close contest with Trump gaining ground. Both campaigns see Arizona, with its 11 electoral votes, as a must-win battleground state.
Harris became the Democratic nominee just last month, and in that time Trump has worked to define her immigration position on his terms. Trump took a recent trip to the Arizona-Mexico border to paint Harris as a “radical leftist” and tie her to violent accounts of migrant crime.
Now, Harris will use the same Arizona county as the backdrop to define her immigration policy views herself.
“Trump will continue to try to paint a picture of her as being soft on allowing individuals to come to the United States without a legal basis,” Bailey said. “So it's a benefit for her to go and to speak on these issues and to make it clear what her policies and priorities are.”
Trump bashed Harris for her border trip in a post on X, saying “she has destroyed the very fabric of our Nation” because border crossings increased during the Biden administration.
During her visit to Douglas, a border city of 15,500 in Cochise County, Harris plans to hit back at Trump for his role in sinking a bipartisan border bill that stalled in Congress earlier this year. Trump urged Republicans to block the bill to deny President Joe Biden an election-year victory.
“This bipartisan bill that she references a lot, it was derailed by her opponent. I think it points to the fact that Donald Trump and his allies, they like to run on problems, they don't like to run on solutions,” said César Fierros, communications director for advocacy group Living United for Change in Arizona. “That's something that she's going to point out, and I think that's going to further turn voters off, once they become more educated on what actually Trump is trying to do when it comes to immigration.”
Previewing her border trip, Harris promised in a TV interview to resurrect the legislation. She noted that it would have put 1,500 new border agents on the southern border, added funding to block the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. and "put more resources into our ability to prosecute transnational criminal organizations."
“We do have a broken immigration system. And it needs to be fixed,” Harris said on MSNBC. “My pledge is that, when elected president, if the American people will have me, I will bring that bill back and I will sign it into law. And we need a comprehensive plan that includes what we need to do to fortify not only our border, but deal with the fact that we also need to create pathways for people to earn citizenship.”
Harris is facing the challenge of satisfying the Democratic base with her immigration policies, while also appealing to the moderate voters and Republicans that her campaign is trying to win over in Arizona. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, a Republican who praised Trump during the former president’s border trip, said he has “mixed emotions” about Harris’ visit coming so late in her term as vice president.
“Are we coming for political reasons, or are we coming to actually engage a border that needs help?” said Dannels.
The Biden administration has shifted rightward on immigration over the last three years. Most recently, Biden signed an executive order placing new restrictions on asylum at the southern border in June.
As her campaign takes shape, Harris has faced questions on her immigration views, including her past promise to give a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, known as “Dreamers.”
Still, Harris’ immigration policies are a major contrast to Trump, who has pledged to conduct mass deportations if he returns to the White House and made false claims about migrants eating housepets in Ohio.
Harris’ focus on bringing back the bipartisan immigration bill was welcome news for some border experts in Arizona.
“We have to wait and see if they do bring that bill back, if there are any changes. But there were a lot of provisions in there that we did like,” said Luis Ramirez Thomas, president of Ramírez Advisors Inter-National, a government affairs and economic development firm that describes itself as specializing in "cross-border business solutions."
"Additional funding for customs personnel, there was some funding for infrastructure," he said. "Was it the ideal bill to meet everybody's needs? No, but it was certainly a step in the right direction."
During her time in the state, Harris will go to the Raul H. Castro Port of Entry for official briefings on operations and progress on disrupting the flow of fentanyl through the southern border.
Fierros, the LUCHA spokesman, said he hopes Harris takes a broader view of immigration during her remarks.
“What we want is to be not just so strictly focused on what's happening on the border or in regards to border security,” Fierros said. “But also the fact that this country has a long history of positive contributions that immigrants have made to this country, and also the fact that there's a big need for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship.”
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