By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign on Friday as her Republican opponent Donald Trump doubles down on the message that immigrants pose a danger to America.
Harris, a Democrat, is visiting Douglas, Arizona, a border town of less than 17,000 people, with a message ripped from Trump’s playbook, hoping to sell U.S. voters on ways she can improve the status quo.
“She has long believed we need an immigration system that is secure, fair, orderly and humane, a stark contrast from the divisive and dangerous politics of Donald Trump,” a Harris campaign aide said. Harris plans to discuss plans for the “toughest bipartisan border security plan in a generation.”
Some 7 million migrants have been arrested illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border under Harris and President Joe Biden, according to government data, a record high number that has fueled criticism from Trump.
Those border crossings have dropped sharply since Biden announced an asylum ban earlier this year.
Trump and his running mate JD Vance have increased their criticism of immigrants in recent weeks, repeating falsehoods about legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio and suggesting immigrants were committing crimes and stealing jobs.
Immigration is a top issue for voters. Arizona is a closely contested election state, with a high population of Latino voters sought by both parties. And the nation’s porous southern border remains a source of fentanyl, a leading cause of drug overdoses in the United States.
On Friday, Trump blamed Harris for the rising trend of irregular migration.
“The architect of this destruction is Kamala Harris,” Trump said at Trump Tower. “She keeps talking about how she supposedly wants to fix the border. We would merely ask, why didn’t she do it four years ago? It’s a very simple question.”
A wide-ranging border security bill that took months to negotiate was blocked by the U.S. Senate in February, after Trump pressed Republicans to reject any compromise.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found that 43% of voters favored Trump on the issue of immigration and 33% favored Harris, while 24% either didn’t know, chose someone else or refused to answer.
Harris was California’s attorney general before being elected to the U.S. Senate and then vice president. Her California remit included targeting gangs that operate on both sides of the border and traffic in drugs, guns and people.
Biden also tasked Harris with dealing with the root causes of migration from Central America, a diplomatic issue on which her record is mixed.
Emigration from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia to the United States has created unease among voters concerned about what the trend means for the U.S. economy, crime rates and culture. The share of American residents born abroad rose by nearly a fifth to 47.8 million, from 2010 to 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; additional reporting by Steve Holland and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Heather Timmons and Miral Fahmy)
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