By the time that Kamala Harris took the stage to speak about her visit to the southern border tonight, the chyrons were at the ready.
Her speech was billed as a major effort to make inroads on rival Donald Trump’s signature issue and one that is perhaps her greatest weakness as a candidate.
All three cable news networks carried the speech. Fox News, in the midst of Jesse Watters Primetime, went for some editorializing as Harris outlined her plans. “Why Hasn’t She Done This Yet?” it read. CNN’s read, “Harris Speaks At Southern Border, Taking Trump Head On.” MSNBC’s read, “Harris Hits Trump For Killing Bipartisan Border Bill.”
“It actually was a wide ranging and substantive speech from the policy end,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said just as Harris finished the 25-minute address, before going to guests with analysis.
While the economy is the top issue for voters, per Pew Research, Trump supporters also put immigration at the top of the list, while Harris supporters cite abortion. Harris’ decision visit to the border carried the risk of putting the Biden administration record in the spotlight, but also gave her the opportunity to try to turn the tables on her rival.
Harris has spent a great deal of her campaign hammering Trump on the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, but she also has attacked him for killing a bipartisan border bill. Trump came out against the legislation, all but ensuring that it would stall out in the Senate.
In her speech tonight, Harris said that 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.”
During her speech at Cochise College in Douglas, AZ, Harris promised to sign the border bill, beef up prosecution of gangs and fentanyl traffickers, and she said that she will take “further action” to “keep the border closed between ports of entry.” Those who cross unlawfully will be removed and barred from reentry for five years, while more severe criminal charges will be sought against those who are repeat violators. Those who do not make an asylum request at a legal port of entry will be barred from receiving asylum.
She also went after Trump’s record on the border, telling the crowd, “In the four years that Donald Trump was president, he did nothing to fix our broken immigration system. He did not solve the shortage of immigration judges. He did not solve the shortage of border agents. He did not create lawful pathways into our nation. He did nothing to address an outdated asylum system.”
She added, “He made the challenges at the border worse, and he is still fanning the flames of fear and division.” She went on to call Trump’s record a “failure to lead.” Trump has called for mass deportations of undocumented, and this week called for migrants in Springfield, OH to be sent back to their countries of origin, even though most of them are in the U.S. legally. “You have to get them the hell out,” he said at a rally.
Trump and his campaign spent much of the day attacking Harris and blaming her for the crisis. “Kamala’s last-minute trip to the border and empty calls for more security 39 days before the election will not rewrite the past 44 months of chaos, crime, and bloodshed caused by her open border policy,” a campaign spokesperson said.
In casting herself as tough on transnational gangs, Harris cited her role as a local and state prosecutor in California, as she was district attorney in San Francisco and later the state’s attorney general. But she spent relatively little time on her role as vice president, as she was tasked to lead diplomatic efforts in Central America and Mexico, hoping to deal with the causes of migration. Trump and his allies, though, have labeled her the “border czar,” even though that was not her official title.
Coming out of her speech, Watters declared that Harris “doesn’t take it seriously at all. It’s the first time she’s ever been to the border.” It was the first time of her campaign, as she did visit El Paso in 2021.
“She says we must reform our immigration system,” Watters said. “The Democrats had the White House, Congress and the Senate for the first two years. They never touched it.”
Trump still has a large lead in polling on who is better to handle the issue of immigration, which has been the source of his attacks since the start of his first presidential run in 2016.
Harris is presenting herself as offering “common sense solutions,” taking a much harder line than her 2020 presidential run and hoping to make gains in a key swing state. Will it work? On CNN, Margaret Hoover, the conservative commentator and host of PBS’ Firing Line, gave Harris credit for offering a more realistic plan.
“He’s saying he’s going to round up 11 million people and ship them, right?” she said. “You have to take both of them and what they are saying at face value, and consider what’s real and what’s not. What she’s saying is far more credible than what he is saying.”
