CNN —
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to go on the offensive against former President Donald Trump on immigration during a visit to Arizona’s southern border on Friday, a campaign aide said, in an effort to overturn a political vulnerability. told CNN.
Immigration is a prominent topic in the 2024 presidential election, with polls showing voters trust Trump more than Harris to handle the issue.
Facing a years-long border crisis, Democrats have sought to gain support by pointing to a bipartisan border measure that Congressional Republicans blocked earlier this year after President Trump voiced opposition.
Vice presidential aides remain concerned about the divide between the two candidates on immigration. But they also pointed to recent polling showing Trump’s lead on the issue has narrowed since Harris took over from President Joe Biden to lead the Democratic Party. They argue that this gives them an opportunity to amplify their message and further close the gap.
Harris will be in Arizona on Friday to outline plans to make it more difficult to lift border restrictions that have largely barred immigrants from applying for asylum in the United States, campaign officials said.
It’s the clearest example yet of a campaign to tighten border security by adopting strict rules that some Democrats have denounced. Harris is expected to go further than President Joe Biden’s June executive order, including making it harder to reach the threshold for lifting restrictions, campaign officials said.
Earlier this year, Biden announced executive actions that would severely limit the ability of immigrants to seek asylum at the U.S. southern border if they crossed the border illegally, a departure from decades-long practice. Immigration advocates liken the president’s actions to Trump-era policies.
This measure can be turned on and off or lifted if encounters between ports of entry average less than 1,500 a day, among other criteria. It will remain as is.
Homeland Security officials credit the measure with reducing border crossing traffic to its lowest level since 2020.
President Trump on Thursday hinted at his current lead in polls while slamming his rival ahead of a border visit.
“Why would she go to the border now and play in the hands of an opponent?” the former president told reporters at Trump Tower in New York. “She keeps talking about how she wants to fix the border. We simply asked, ‘Why didn’t she do that four years ago?'”
Part of the Harris campaign’s strategy to counter Trump includes a new ad titled “Never Backed Down” to air in Arizona and other battleground states, highlighting Harris’ past border work. It outlines plans to increase the number of border officers, among other things.
“She put cartel members and drug traffickers in prison, and she will protect our borders,” the narrator says.
Campaign aides say Harris plans to use her trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to criticize President Trump for abandoning a bipartisan border agreement and focus on her work as attorney general of the border state of California. It is said that
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than political gamesmanship,” Harris is expected to say, according to excerpts of her remarks.
The 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. Just days after she entered the presidential race, campaign officials released a video contrasting Harris and Trump with a focus on immigration policy, particularly border security.
“Kamala Harris supports more Border Patrol agents. Donald Trump blocked legislation to increase the number of Border Patrol agents,” the video’s voiceover says.
Harris has previously traveled to the border as vice president, citing her work as a border state senator and state attorney general.
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 showing Trump with a lead in the battleground state. It was done. A Fox News poll of the state released Thursday found no clear leader among likely voters, with Trump at 50% and Harris at 47%.
Despite President Trump’s attacks on the Biden administration’s handling of border security, U.S. officials have continued to attack the Biden administration for months, citing recent executive actions to curb asylum access at the southern border. The country has continuously touted the low number of border crossings.
The recent dramatic drop in border crossings is a reprieve for the Biden administration, which has struggled with record border crossings amid an unprecedented wave of migrants across the Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, Republicans have mistakenly called Harris the “border czar” and placed her in charge of all U.S.-Mexico border controls. It’s a title Harris’ team has been trying to shake off since the moment Biden tasked her with tackling the root causes of immigration in 2021.
Although Harris has only occasionally spoken about her mission, sources say it has had early successes in Central America as a result of major private sector investment. However, it is bundled with the administration’s larger immigration issue.
Harris campaign officials believe she has a case against her on immigration. She used the failure of a bipartisan border plan to accuse Trump of being insincere at the border and cited her career as California’s attorney general fighting cross-border criminal organizations.
Campaign allies are also emphasizing the need to leverage the vice president’s background on immigration issues in the Senate and California to address broader immigration reform beyond the border.
“It’s good that she’s going. It’s helpful to get her message out there,” one source close to the campaign told CNN. “Obviously, she’s at the border. That’s the main focus. But we also need to talk about the system more broadly.”
A campaign aide said Ms. Harris “rejects the false choice between securing our borders and creating a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system, protecting our nation’s security and our enduring legacy as a nation of immigrants.” “We argue that we need to do both in order to achieve this goal.” ”
Harris last week slammed Trump’s immigration proposals, saying they paint a dark picture of her Republican rival, citing controversial Trump policies such as a proposal to deport large numbers of illegal immigrants.
“While we fight to move our country forward into a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will continue to try to pull us back. We all know they are tearing families apart.” “I remember going there for the first time, and now they have committed to carry out the largest deportation, mass deportation, in American history,” she said at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Leadership Conference in Washington. said.
“Imagine what it would be like and what it would be like. What would it be like? Massive raids, mass concentration camps. What would they talk about? ” she said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.
