Harris rejects ‘false choice’ between border security & humane immigration during Arizona border visit

During a visit to an Arizona border town Friday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said she’ll take tough steps on border security, restricting asylum claims and combating the flow of fentanyl, while pushing to “modernize” the U.S. immigration system.

“I reject the false choice that we must decide between securing our border and creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly, and humane. We can and we must do both,” Vice President Harris told a crowd at Cochise College’s Douglas Campus. 

“As president, I will put politics aside to modernize our immigration system and find solutions to problems which have persisted for far too long,” she said.

Harris pledged to stop the flow of fentanyl at the border by boosting
drug-enforcement staff at the border and increasing screening
technology at ports of entry.

The vice president also told the crowd she would
double the Justice Department’s budget for prosecuting transnational
gangs and cartels. 

As California attorney general, Harris said
she “saw the violence and chaos that transnational criminal
organizations cause, and the heartbreak and loss from the spread of
their illicit drugs.”

Harris said she would keep in place the restrictions on asylum claims ordered by President Joe Biden this year, and would propose even more limits.

“If someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum,” the vice president said.

That would require a change to U.S. law, which lays out the legal process for asylum claims.

“While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and secure, and that is my goal,” Harris said.

The vice president spoke for about 30 minutes to an audience of around 315. For her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris met with Douglas Mayor Donald Huish, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and Cochise County Supervisor Ann English, along with U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.

While visiting Douglas, Harris spoke with John Modlin, chief patrol agent for the Tucson sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, and Blaine Bennett, the BP agent in charge of the Douglas station, the Los Angeles Times reported.

During her speech, Harris touted last year’s increase in overtime pay for Border Patrol agents.

She blasted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for tanking a border security bill in Congress earlier this year.

The former president urged Republicans to vote against the Border Act of 2024,
which would have increased border enforcement. The measure had bipartisan
support — it was negotiated by U.S. Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona,
formerly a Democrat and now an independent, Sen. Chris Murphy, a
Democrat from Connecticut, and Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from
Oklahoma.

The bill was unveiled in the Senate in February, though it did not pass. House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “dead on arrival.”

Harris said Friday that the measure was “the strongest border security bill we have seen in decades.”

“It
was endorsed by the Border Patrol union, and it should be in effect
today, producing results in real time right now,” she said.

Harris
said that even though Trump “tried to sabotage” the border security
bill, as president, she would bring it back up and “proudly” sign it
into law, amid cheers from the crowd.

Kelly, who introduced Harris
at the rally, told the crowd that Trump’s interference with the bill
was “the most hypocritical thing” that he has seen “in three-and-a-half
years in Washington.”

“He didn’t want it fixed because he needed
it for the election. That’s because he cares more about running for
president than he does about communities like yours,” Kelly said.

The
morning after the border legislation was introduced in February, Trump
posted on his Truth Social Network that “Only a fool, or a Radical Left
Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill.”

The bill
would have tightened border security by hiring more Border Patrol
officers and deploying 100 fentanyl screening machines at the Arizona
border, where 50 percent of the fentanyl seized in the United States
enters the country.

The Democratic nominee had bipartisan support at the rally Friday;
she was introduced by former San Joaquin County (Calif.)
District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar, a Republican, and the Mayor of
Douglas Donald Huish, also a Republican, who told attendees that he and many of his fellow
border mayors are endorsing Harris because of her promises to fix the
broken immigration system and secure the border.

“The vice
president understands the need for a bipartisan solution to border
issues, because she’s worked on border issues for a long time,” Huish
said.

Huish, elected mayor of the predominantly Democratic city — a blue spot in Republican Cochise County — in a three-way race in 2020, did not seek another term this year.

Huish, while publicly declaring his backing for the Democratic candidate, has also signed on to support U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, the freshman Republican in nearby Congressional District 6.

Ciscomani, whose Southeastern Arizona district doesn’t cover Douglas (which is represented by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat) but does include a small rural slice of the border, said the visit by Harris “smells of nothing more than a photo opportunity to try to score political points.”

Harris and Trump, whose campaign stopped in Sierra Vista last month, have been polling neck-and-neck in Arizona for the majority of the race. An average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics showed Trump leading by two points Friday afternoon.

Trump won Arizona in 2016 with 49 percent of the vote against Hillary
Clinton’s 45 percent, but lost to Joe Biden in 2020 by less than a
percentage point, or 10,457 votes.

Immigration and border security continue to be one of the most contentious issues for the two candidates — at a rally in Tucson earlier this month, Trump vowed to begin “the largest mass deportation mission in the history of our country” in his second term as president.

At a campaign stop in Sierra Vista, the Republican nominee told a crowd that he had given Harris “the strongest and most secure border in American history” when he left office in 2021.

At the event Friday, Harris condemned Trump’s response to the crisis at the border.

“Trump
did nothing to fix our broken immigration system as president,” she
said. “He did not solve the shortage of border agents or address our
outdated asylum system. What did he do instead? He separated families,
ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, and put children in cages.
That is not the work of a leader. That is an abdication of leadership.
We cannot accept Donald Trump’s failure to lead.”

Harris advocated for “clear legal pathways” for migrants looking to enter the country and long term residents, like Dreamers, who Harris said are “American in every way.”

Among the attendees were Pima County Supervisors Rex Scott and Sylvia Lee,
former U.S. Rep. Ron Barber, Cochise County Supervisor Ann English, and
former Arizona Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr. Not at the event was Democratic congressional candidate Kirsten Engel, who is seeking to unseat first-termer Ciscomani in CD6. Engel narrowly lost the 2022 race to the GOP freshman. Grijalva, still recovering from cancer treatments earlier this year, is not yet making public appearances.