Kamala Harris blames Trump for refugee border crisis

Kamala Harris is traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Friday to address one of its biggest vulnerabilities and counter Donald Trump’s scaremongering about illegal immigration.

“The American people deserve a president who prioritizes border security over playing political games,” the vice president wants to say, according to a senior Harris campaign official briefed on the event.

Harris will turn the tables and blame the ex-president for the immigration crisis at the southern border, highlighting his leading role last spring in preventing a bipartisan deal to curb illegal border crossings.

A preview of her speech in Douglas, Arizona, across from neighboring Agua Prieta in Mexico, focuses not on the surreal, far-right animal-eating conspiracies of Trump and his Vice President JD Vance, but on Trump’s concrete record. He demanded that Republicans in Congress, whom he largely controls, reject a border control bill negotiated by senators on both sides of the ballot. Trump has long viewed bipartisan governance as weak, and a political victory by vulnerable Democratic congressional candidates in this high-risk election cycle could have damaged the Republican Party.

On Friday, Harris plans to announce that if elected, she will reintroduce the bill that would multiply the number of border agents and strengthen asylum laws. She will tout her experience as a former prosecutor in fighting drug and people smuggling cartels and announce that she will stop them Cross-border transport of deadly fentanyl will be a “top priority,” senior campaign aide said. Harris will propose adding new fentanyl detection machines at U.S. entry points.

The Democratic candidate’s trip to the border is intended to counter claims by Trump and his MAGA allies that Harris and the Biden administration have opened the floodgates to “illegal aliens.” Both Trump and Vance have spread outlandish claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating residents’ dogs and cats, prompting a group to file criminal charges against them.

According to a Gallup poll, Trump and Vance have repeatedly emphasized the issue during the campaign as anti-immigration sentiment has surged among voters. At a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, last weekend, Trump declared: “I’m your border president, your border president. Kamala would be your invasion president.”

Recent polls show that even though Harris is matching or even surpassing Trump in national head-to-head polls, Harris is still the Republican candidate who owns the immigration narrative. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that a significant number of voters are more likely to trust Trump than Harris to handle the border issue.

But Harris’ campaign advisers believe the Democrat’s visit to the border on Friday will help narrow the divide over her long-standing political vulnerability.