Abhay Singh
After avoiding the subject of immigration at rallies this week in Michigan and Wisconsin, Vice President Kamala Harris made it a major part of her stump speech on Friday night at a crowded gathering in a Phoenix suburb.
She told the supporters “We will move forward and take on the biggest issues facing our nation, for example, the issue of immigration. I was attorney general of a border state. I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”
Harris criticized former President Donald Trump for his lack of success in securing the border
Harris defended her support for border security legislation and a citizenship pathway for undocumented immigrants, highlighting Trump’s ineffectiveness in border security and his prioritization of electoral politics over substantive reforms, during a speech.
She stated “Donald Trump does not want to fix this problem. Earlier this year, we had a chance to pass the toughest bipartisan border security bill in decades, but Donald Trump tanked the deal because he thought by doing that it would help him win an election.”
“We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it,” she added.
Since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket, Harris has been under severe scrutiny on immigration from the Trump team. Republicans have largely concentrated on Harris’s position within the Biden administration.
Though GOP detractors claim she was also entrusted with improving border security, which was outside her immediate jurisdiction, she was given the duty of tackling the underlying causes of migration from Northern Triangle countries in 2021.
She attacked Trump for blocking the border security bill
Harris has discussed immigration during her presidential campaign, attacking Trump for blocking the border security bill in Georgia. The Harris-Walz campaign has released ads on the topic ahead of her visits to Georgia and Arizona.
In an ad that was released by her campaign, the narrator said “As president, she will hire thousands more border agents, Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.”
The Trump team responded to Harris and Walz’s Arizona visit by claiming in a statement that the vice president ought to have gone to a border town.
“Vice-Presidential pick is just as dangerously liberal as she is,”
Halee Dobbins, the director of the Republican National Committee in Arizona and a Trump campaign staffer said “Border Czar Kamala Harris’ Vice-Presidential pick is just as dangerously liberal as she is, Instead of stopping in Phoenix, Kamala Harris should be visiting our southern border and seeing the firsthand results of her border bloodbath.”
The focus on immigration is heightened as both campaigns vie for votes in Arizona, where President Biden won the state by 10,000 votes in 2020. Polling suggests the race between Harris and Trump could be close, and Democrats’ share of the state’s electorate has decreased by 3% during Biden’s administration.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly praised Harris and her running mate Tim Walz before they entered the stage on Friday night. In the face of Republican criticism of Minnesotan Walz’s military service, Kelly, a former astronaut and navy aviator, stood up for his fellow veteran.
In reference to Walz, Kelly said “He served honorably in uniform for decades, Tim has brought that experience to everything he has done since fighting for our service members, fighting for veterans and fighting for military families,”
Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a longtime ally of Harris, spoke before Kelly and used his remarks to criticize Republican opponent Kari Lake in Arizona’s Senate race and commend former House colleague Walz.
“We both served on many committees, but I know one thing about him: he always put veterans first,” Gallego said.
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