Vice President Harris waves after being greeted by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., as she departs for a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sept. 27, 2024.
Kevin Lamarque/Pool/AFP
hide caption
toggle caption
Kevin Lamarque/Pool/AFP
TUCSON, Ariz. — Vice President Harris is set to propose tighter rules for asylum claims during a speech at the U.S-Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona on Friday, a campaign official told reporters traveling with her.
The proposal would build on executive action taken by President Biden earlier this year that effectively allows the administration to suspend asylum claims when numbers reach certain thresholds, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of Harris’ remarks.
Harris will announce that she would have even tougher emergency authorities, making them harder to lift until numbers drop to significantly low levels.
Harris is using this border trip to try to shore up one of her biggest political liabilities while hammering her opponent for his role in inflaming tensions over immigration and border security.
Border security is one of Harris’ biggest political liabilities
Border security is a top issue for voters in this election, and most polls show that former President Donald Trump has an edge over Harris — although it’s not as big as the one he had over Biden when he was the Democratic candidate. Trump had made cracking down on immigration a signature issue when he was in office, and has revived it for his campaign for another term.
Harris previously has said that if she wins the election, she would try to revive a bipartisan agreement that would have provided more funding to hire more border agents, as well as tighten rules for asylum and expand detention facilities. Harris and Biden have blamed Trump for pressuring his allies in Congress to block the bill.
Biden later took executive action to try to accomplish some of the measures in the bill, though it is being challenged in court. Unlawful border crossings have since dropped by more than 50%, the White House said, and are currently at their lowest level in four years.
Trump says Harris should have done during Biden’s term
In a speech before Harris’ trip, Trump attacked Harris for not doing more to address border security as vice president, calling her a “border czar” responsible for the surges in migration during Biden’s term.
The “border czar” moniker refers to an assignment Biden gave to Harris early on in her time as vice president to work with Central American leaders on economic and societal issues that were driving tens of thousands of people to try to seek asylum in the United States.
Harris has said her work on the root causes of migration got results. But she hasn’t talked about that on the campaign trail, instead choosing to emphasize her work as California’s attorney general cracking down on drug smuggling.
Harris last visited the border in 2021, when she went to El Paso, Texas. This time, she chose a critical swing state for her trip. Trump narrowly lost Arizona in 2020 and has been working hard to win it back. Polls show it is a very tight race.
