During a raucous rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris went after the former president Donald Trump on what polls show is his strongest campaign issue: immigration.
“In this campaign, I will proudly compare my record to his every day of the week,” Harris said, “including on immigration.”
Harris told her audience that Trump “doesn’t do what he says” when it comes to border security, noting that he had instructed Senate Republicans to vote against a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at curbing illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Our administration worked on the most important border bill in decades,” Harris said. “Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported it. Even the Border Patrol supported it. It was all poised to pass, but at the last minute Trump ordered his allies in the Senate to vote it down. He let the bipartisan deal fail because he thought it would help him win an election.”
The bill in question
In late 2023, the Biden administration faced Republican opposition in Congress to continuing to fund Ukraine in its war against Russia. GOP lawmakers demanded that the president sign the border security measures in exchange for sending more money and weapons to Kiev. Biden It was agreed and a bill was developed by both parties.
The bill, called the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, proposed building new border barriers, expanding detention facilities and hiring more Border Patrol agents and immigration judges. It also proposed ending the “catch and release” policy for people seeking asylum from other countries, and would have provided more money to try to stop the flow of fentanyl and human trafficking into the U.S.
While few Republicans considered the legislation perfect, the bill had enough support to pass, until Trump pressured his party to reject it.
“Only a fool or a radical left wing Democrat would vote for this horrible border bill,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on February 5, “which only gives us the authority to close after 5,000 encounters per day, when we already have the right to CLOSE THE BORDER NOW, which needs to happen.”
The rise in immigration and its impact on polls
Government data shows that about 7 million migrants have been arrested for illegally crossing the U.S. southern border during the Biden administration. That figure doesn’t include so-called “go-aways,” those who cross the border but avoid arrest.
With annual illegal border crossings averaging 2 million in 2021 and 2023, Biden, who also increased deportations from the U.S., rolled out a series of measures in early 2024 that have curbed that number. Still, 1.3 million migrants crossed the southern border in the first 9 months of fiscal year 2024.
On July 21, 10 days before Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing that Americans favored Trump over Biden on immigration policy by a margin of 52%-35%. A YouGov poll released the day after Biden announced his departure showed Harris trailing Trump by 15 points (45%-30%) on immigration.
Trump and his Republican allies go on the offensive
Over the past week, Trump has released campaign ads attacking Harris on immigration, two of which falsely claim that Biden has appointed her as his “border czar.”
“Joe Biden appointed Kamala Harris as border czar to improve immigration,” one ad read.
With illegal immigration rising early in his presidency, Biden tasked Harris in March 2021 to lead his administration’s efforts to address the “root causes” of migration from Central America.
“I asked her, the vice president, today — because she is the most qualified person to do so — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that are helping — are going to need help to stem the movement of so many people, stem the migration to our southern border,” Biden said.
In that role, Harris convinced a number of companies to open offices in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, increasing employment. However, her efforts had little effect on the flow of migrants to the U.S.
Harris’s high-profile role and the continued rise in illegal immigration have left her in a vulnerable political position, and Republicans have repeatedly called her out on it.
“And let me remind you. Kamala had one job. One job. And that was to fix the border. Now imagine if she was in charge of the entire country,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said during her speech at the Republican National Convention prior to Biden’s exit from the race.
Turnabout is fair game
With Republican attacks on Harris over immigration sure to play a central role in the final three months of the 2024 campaign, the vice president is hoping to flip the script for Trump by highlighting her time as “attorney general of a border state,” as she said at Tuesday’s rally in Atlanta.
“In that job, I walked with law enforcement officers through underground tunnels between the United States of America and Mexico at that border,” she said. “I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels, human traffickers who were coming into our country illegally. I prosecuted them in case after case and I won.”
Whether this reasoning will also have consequences for her polls on immigration remains to be seen.
