Kamala Harris visits border and calls for more security and immigration reforms

DOUGLAS — Standing where Republicans have long dared her to go, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Arizona’s border with Mexico on Friday and said it is former President Donald Trump who isn’t serious about border security.

In a major policy speech in Douglas outlining twin priorities on the issue of border security and immigration reform, Harris took Trump to task for the unsolved problems along the border and vowed to provide meaningful leadership on an issue familiar to her.

“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,” Harris said during her 26-minute speech at Cochise College.

Trump “ripped toddlers out of their mother’s arms, put children in cages, and tried to end protections for dreamers. He made the challenges at the border worse, and he is still — and he is still — fanning the flames of fear and division.”

But Harris' speech in Douglas showed she is willing to take a much tougher stance on border security and illegal immigration along the southern border that is more in line with Republicans and Trump’s stance.

Harris said as president she would take further action to continue a policy implemented by the Biden administration in June to keep the border closed between ports of entry.

Under the Biden administration policy, asylum seekers who cross the border illegally instead of through legal border crossings face quick deportation and are barred from seeking asylum. Previously under the Biden administration, a large majority of asylum seekers who crossed the border illegally between ports of entry were processed and then released into the U.S. while their asylum cases were pending in immigration courts, a process that can take years and allows asylum seekers to put down roots, making it less likely they will ever leave, even if they lose their asylum cases.

Under the previous Biden administration policy, millions of asylum seekers were allowed into the United States.

The Biden administration’s new border policy has received criticism from immigrant rights and advocacy groups who say the policy restricts asylum to people who qualify under law.

Harris said as president she would also crack down on illegal border crossers who she promised to deport quickly and bar from reentering for five years. Repeat crossers would face criminal penalties.

Those policies would mark a return to stricter border policies first put into place under previous Democrat and Republican administrations but for the most part were paused under the Biden administration.

Harris' policy speech capped an afternoon that began with a briefing on operations and progress on disrupting the flow of fentanyl from U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the entry port in Douglas.

She later turned Trump’s signature political issue as an argument against him.

She blamed Trump for the defeat of a bipartisan bill negotiated earlier this year in part by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., that she supports and would have boosted resources to help manage the border.

He did so, Harris said, to ensure President Joe Biden didn’t get a legislative victory in an election year and showed Americans how much he really cares about the issue.

“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,” she said.

“But Donald Trump tanked it. He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said stop the bill. Because you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

Harris cited her tenure as California’s attorney general, saying she walked through smugglers’ tunnels who trafficked guns, drugs and people — and prosecuted such criminals.

Republicans assailed Harris ahead of her visit, saying a spike in illegal border crossings came on her watch and after Biden named her his “border czar.”

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., whose congressional district includes most of Cochise County, knocked Harris' trip as a “photo opportunity.”

“Vice President Harris’ visit to the border smells like nothing more than a photo opportunity to try and score political points. For three and a half years, the vice president has been in a position to address this crisis but instead she has ignored it,” he said in a statement.

“If she was truly serious about addressing the crisis at the border, she would have done something as the sitting vice president to help border communities that have been calling for help.”

After the Harris event, the Trump campaign denounced her visit as "a photo op and disgusting speech designed as political cover for the invasion she has brought on the American people over the past four years."

Gina Swoboda, Arizona Republican Party chair, said the state’s residents have lived with “the destructive policies of Kamala Harris’ open-border agenda for nearly four years now."

"An eleventh hour visit to the scene of the crime by ‘Border Czar’ Kamala is just another desperate attempt to score political points and cover up the absolute havoc she created," Swoboda said. "Make no mistake, if elected, Kamala Harris would only worsen the crisis that continues to destroy our communities and fuel a drug epidemic, which has stolen thousands of American lives and cost Arizona taxpayers over $58 billion."

Seeking a reset on a thorny issue

But the optics of Harris at the Arizona-Mexico border didn’t seem a one-sided admission of failure that Trump and his allies may have wanted.

There were no sizable protests. Illegal entries have waned compared with the record numbers of illegal border crossings earlier in the Biden administration. She urged the border-security bill to do more now than Trump would allow.

During her tour of the border wall, Harris received briefings about efforts to combat traffickers and transnational criminal organizations from Customs and Border Protection officials from the Tucson Sector and Douglas Border Patrol Station.

She visited a portion of the wall that was constructed from 2011 to 2012, a White House official said.

Harris’ first stop was the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Douglas, where tall metal slats are wrapped in barbed wire. 

Harris said that Border Patrol agents have a “tough job” as she walked into the Raul H. Castro Port of Entry.

“They’ve got a tough job. And they need, rightly, support to do their job. And they work long hours, they’re very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk to them about what we can do to support them and thank them for the hard work they do,” Harris told reporters.

A visit seeking more than Arizona votes

Harris’ relatively brief visit to Arizona was her seventh since last year, and may have been her most important.

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.

Trump has visited the border in Arizona and elsewhere taking what amounted to victory laps for his signature border wall and helped push the issue to the national fore.

Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, have each visited the southern border in Sierra Vista, a city in rural Cochise County.

Trump attacked Harris on Friday for going to the border, even as Republicans long criticized her for not doing so.

“Border Czar Kamala Harris has decided, for political reasons, that it’s time for her to go to our broken Southern Border. What a disgrace that she waited so long,” Trump said in a post on X.

“When Kamala is seen at the Border on Friday, she will pass Hundreds of Miles of Wall that was built by TRUMP, and it is Wall that WORKS! When she speaks, be advised that this woman has allowed more than 21 million people into our Country, totally unvetted, and from places unknown. They are now creating criminal havoc all throughout the Country.”

Playing up past prosecutions

To counter Trump’s edge on the issue, the Harris campaign has touted her past role as attorney general of California. The vice president has sought to remind voters that she prosecuted criminals who trafficked guns, drugs and human beings during her time as California’s top prosecutor.

On Friday, she sought to directly rebut his advantage on the issue with a message that acknowledged conditions aren’t acceptable and Trump himself is a barrier to better security.

The port in Douglas offered another political point for Harris as well: It is being revamped using $400 million in funding from the infrastructure law negotiated by Sinema and signed by Biden.

The funding will revitalize the existing port and build a second one over the next several years, as part of what officials call “the Two-Port Solution.” 

Harris’ visit may help shore up her standing in Arizona, where public polls show another razor-thin race. But her visit addressed an issue of interest far beyond a single swing state or the nation’s border states.

Her support for the border-security bill isn’t a new line of attack for Harris. She promised to resurrect the bill during a TV interview on Wednesday, saying 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 during an interview 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.”

Illegal entries fall after Biden order

Border crossings hit record highs under President Joe Biden, a fact that Trump has played up during his campaign. However, travel was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns during the Trump administration, complicating comparisons. 

Now, encounters at the border are trending down after Biden signed an executive order in June aimed at curtailing the number of asylum seekers entering the U.S.

Federal officials saw a 40% decrease in migrant encounters in the month after Biden signed the executive order. In the Tucson sector, which has the highest number of encounters along the entire southern border, migrant encounters dropped by nearly half from June to July.

The last time Harris was in Arizona, she held a packed rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The vice president also paid a visit to the Cocina Adamex restaurant in downtown Phoenix. 

Trump followed suit at the same venue in Glendale and drew a crowd that matched or exceeded hers in a sign of his continued popularity with Republicans.

After Harris’ visit Friday, Arizona will have seen at least one presidential candidate or major surrogate per week during September. 

Vance campaigned in Phoenix at the beginning of the month, followed by vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz’ swing through Tempe and Mesa the following week.

Trump held a rally in Tucson in mid-September, and Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, campaigned for his wife in the same city on the same day.

Walz’s wife, Gwen Walz, made a solo trip to Arizona last week, going from Phoenix to Flagstaff to court voters.

Why Douglas? Here's why Kamala Harris is visiting this Arizona border city

Arizona Republic reporter Sarah Lapidus contributed to this article.