Harris Tries To Blunt Trump’s Strongest Problem In opposition to Her With Go to To Southern Border

Vice President Kamala Harris labored to show the tables on border safety, Donald Trump’s strongest problem towards her within the coming presidential election, promising Friday to take a tougher line on those that cross the border illegally and accusing the previous president of intentionally sabotaging laws that might have helped resolve the issue.

“It was the strongest border security bill that we have seen in decades. And it should be in effect today,” the Democratic presidential nominee mentioned in a 24-minute speech close to a port of entry in southern Arizona. “But Donald Trump tanked it…. He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

Harris mentioned she would proceed President Joe Biden’s new coverage that has dramatically minimize unlawful border crossings by ending asylum requests for individuals who didn’t come into the nation at a licensed port of entry as soon as such crossings exceeded 2,500 per day over seven straight days. And she or he mentioned she would enhance felony penalties on repeat offenders.

“I believe we have a duty to set rules at our border and to enforce them,” she mentioned.

Harris was launched by a mom who misplaced a son to a fentanyl overdose, and she or he spent a number of minutes discussing the “scourge” of that drug’s results on People. She reminded her viewers that as a two-term lawyer basic of California, she prosecuted Mexican smuggling gangs.

“I walked through tunnels that traffickers used to smuggle contraband into the United States,” she mentioned. “I’ve seen tunnels with walls as smooth as the walls of our living room, complete with lighting and air conditioning, making very clear that it is about an enterprise that is making a whole lot of money in the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings.”

Harris additionally criticized Trump for making no effort to reform the immigration system throughout his 4 years in workplace, and she or he mentioned she would make {that a} precedence, notably to supply a path to citizenship for individuals who have been introduced into the nation illegally as youngsters.

Biden, earlier than he ended his reelection marketing campaign, had been polling far behind Trump on the problem of unlawful immigration, however Harris has managed to shut that hole considerably in current polls. She has aggressively blamed Trump for scuttling the measure that might have added 1,500 extra Border Patrol brokers and paid for 100 new machines to detect fentanyl at ports of entry, which is the place the overwhelming majority of it has been coming into the nation.

That Trump persuaded his GOP allies to cease the laws early this yr isn’t in dispute.

Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lead negotiator for Republicans on the invoice, supported it, saying his celebration was getting a lot of what they needed on border safety. He advised Fox Information that Trump personally lobbied his colleagues to kill the invoice in an effort to assist his marketing campaign to regain the White Home.

“Trump said don’t fix anything during the presidential election. It’s the single biggest issue, don’t resolve this. We’ll resolve it next year,” Lankford mentioned.

And Trump himself acknowledged on the time that he didn’t need the invoice to cross. “Please blame it on me. Please,” he mentioned at a Jan. 27 rally.

Since Harris grew to become the presumptive Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out in July, Trump has accused her of failing to unravel the unlawful immigration drawback regardless of being “the border czar.”

“She’s done the worst job, probably in the history of any border, not just our border,” he mentioned in remarks to reporters Thursday in an try to rebut Harris’ Arizona go to upfront.

Harris has appropriately famous, although, that her temporary was to search out and tackle the foundation causes of migration flows from Latin America into the US, to not “secure” the border.

Harris has proved since changing into Trump’s opponent to be a simpler communicator than Biden. In her Sept. 10 presidential debate with Trump, for instance, she answered an immigration query by making it totally about Trump, accusing him of blocking the border invoice solely to maintain it alive as a marketing campaign problem.

She then tangentially famous that Trump’s rally-goers depart his occasions earlier than he has completed talking, which then drew from him an indignant response that devolved into his now notorious lies that Haitian immigrants have been consuming their neighbors’ pets in Ohio.

The coup-attempting former president, who’s now additionally a convicted felony awaiting sentencing, made unlawful immigration a cornerstone of his 2016 presidential marketing campaign and repeatedly promised he would pressure Mexico to pay for an enormous border wall of bolstered concrete.

Upon election, nevertheless, Trump made no effort to get Mexico to pay and finally raided cash earmarked for housing and colleges for navy service members and their households to construct his promised wall, which by then had morphed right into a barely taller model of the metal border fence that been began by President George W. Bush and continued below President Barack Obama.

By the point Trump left workplace, there have been solely 52 new miles of fence constructed the place there beforehand had been no barrier alongside the 1,954-mile border. A further 400 miles of 18-to-30-foot metal fence was constructed to exchange older fencing.