Vice President Kamala Harris plans to go on the offensive against former President Donald Trump on immigration this Friday (27) when she visits the southern border of Arizona, campaign aides told CNN as she tries to turn a political vulnerability on its head.
Immigration has played a prominent role in the 2024 presidential election, with polls showing that voters have more confidence in Trump to handle the issue than in Harris.
Democrats, facing years of border crises, have tried to gain ground by pointing to the bipartisan border measure that congressional Republicans blocked earlier this year after Trump spoke out against it.
The vice president’s advisors remain concerned about the disparity between the candidates on immigration issues. But they also cite recent polls that show Trump’s lead on the issue has narrowed since Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket — providing them with an opportunity, they say, to amplify their message and close the gap even further.
Trump alluded to his current lead in the polls on Thursday (26), when criticizing his rival before visiting the border.
“Why would she go to the border now, playing straight into her opponent’s hand?” the former president told reporters at Trump Tower in New York. “She keeps talking about how she supposedly wants to fix the border. “We would just ask, ‘Why didn’t she do this four years ago?’”
Part of the Harris campaign’s strategy to combat Trump includes a new ad, titled “Never Backed Down,” which will run in Arizona and other battleground states, highlighting Harris’s past work related to the border and outlining her plans, including hiring more border agents.
“She has put cartel members and drug traffickers behind bars and will protect our border,” says the narrator.
Harris plans to use her trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to criticize Trump for thwarting the bipartisan border agreement and interpret her job as attorney general of California, a border state, a campaign aide said.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than political gamesmanship,” Harris is expected to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks.
An initial strategy
Harris’ campaign signaled early on that it planned to counter Trump’s attacks on the vice president and the administration’s handling of border security. A few days after she launched her presidential candidacy, campaign officials released a video that showed a contrast between Harris and Trump on immigration policy – namely supporting border security.
“Kamala Harris supports increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. Donald Trump blocked a bill to increase the number of Border Patrol agents,” the voiceover in the video stated.
Harris has previously visited the border as vice president and cited her work as a border state senator and state attorney general.
This Friday’s visit comes at a time when border crossings are at their lowest since 2020 – and follows a recent New York Times/Siena College poll that showed Trump leading in the swing state.
U.S. officials touted consecutive months of low border crossings, citing recent executive action to restrict access to asylum at the southern border, even as Trump launched attacks on the Biden administration’s handling of border security.
The recent dramatic drop in border crossings has provided relief to the Biden administration after struggling with record crossings amid unprecedented migration across the Western Hemisphere.

Throughout this time, Republicans falsely referred to Harris as the “border czar,” classifying her as solely responsible for managing the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s a title Harris’ team has been trying to shed since the moment Biden appointed her to tackle the root causes of migration in 2021.
Harris has only occasionally spoken about her mission, which sources say demonstrated early success in Central America as a result of large private-sector investments. But this is associated with the government’s biggest migration problems.
Harris’ campaign officials think she has a point on immigration: using the defeated bipartisan border measure to deem Trump unserious on the border and citing her record as California’s attorney general in combating transnational criminal gangs.
Campaign allies also stressed the need to look beyond the border and talk about broader immigration reform, drawing on the vice president’s experience in the Senate and in California working on immigration issues.
“I’m glad she’s going. It’s helpful to get her message out there,” said a source close to the campaign. to CNN.
“Obviously, it’s on the border – that’s the main focus. But also talking more broadly about the entire system.”
According to a campaign aide, Harris plans to “reject the false choice between securing the border and creating an immigration system that is safe, orderly and humane – arguing that we must do both to protect our country’s security and legacy.” enduring as a nation of immigrants.”
Last week, Harris criticized Trump for his immigration proposals, citing his controversial policies, including his proposed mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, to paint a bleak picture of her Republican rival.
“As we fight to move our nation forward to a better future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will continue to try to pull us back. We all remember what they did to separate families and now they have committed to carrying out the largest deportation, the largest mass deportation in American history,” she said at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute leadership conference in Washington.
“Imagine what it would be like. How will this happen? Massive attacks, massive detention camps. What are they talking about?” she said.
This content was originally published in Kamala Harris goes to the US border and should focus on immigration on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil

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