PHOENIX (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday will make her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee to confront head-on one of her biggest vulnerabilities ahead of the November election.
She is scheduled to appear in Douglas, Arizona, as former President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans pound Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration and fault the vice president for spending little time visiting the border during her time in the White House.
Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and one that contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Trump has an edge with voters on migration, and Harris has gone on offense to improve her standing on the issue and defuse a key line of political attack for Trump.
In nearly every campaign speech she gives, Harris recounts how a sweeping bipartisan package aiming to overhaul the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged top Republicans to oppose it.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks previewed by her campaign.
After the immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. Since then, arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen.
Harris will also use her trip to remind voters about her work as attorney general of California in confronting crime along the border. During an August rally in Glendale, outside Phoenix, she talked about helping to prosecute drug- and people-smuggling gangs that operated transnationally and at the border.