Trump drags Harris over border policy as she readies acceptance speech

Former President Donald Trump took his Democratic National Convention counterprogramming message on illegal immigration to battleground Arizona on Thursday as his newly minted Democratic opponent prepared to take the stage in Chicago.

Vice President Kamala Harris will give her acceptance speech on Thursday night, capping off a week of events that have featured speakers warning voters about the dangers of a second Trump term. Harris has tightened the race against Trump ever since she rose to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden dropped out of the contest — and races in several crucial states like Arizona, a border state, are set to determine the presidency.

“The choice is simple: Kamala's mass amnesty of criminals, or President Trump’s mass deportation of criminals,” Trump said in Cochise County, Arizona, while standing next to a stretch of border wall.

Trump had been trolling Harris throughout Thursday ahead of her appearance in Chicago, beginning with a Fox News interview in the morning, the visit to the southern border in the middle of the day and plans to post his “play by play” of the DNC’s prime time speakers.

The Trump campaign and Republicans for several weeks have tried to cast Harris as responsible for the surges in illegal immigration under the first three years of Biden’s presidency, given that the president put her in charge of addressing the root causes of migration in Central America. Trump and Republicans have used the title “border czar” to describe her role though she and the Biden administration reject it. The term also was previously used as a shorthand by numerous news outlets.

“She loved the title, but she didn't want to do the work, or she's lazy,” Trump said. “And probably more importantly than being lazy, she wants to have an open border.”

Harris leads Trump 59 percent to 34 percent among likely Hispanic voters in Arizona, per a new poll from TelevisaUnivision’s Strategy & Insights and Media in partnership with Media Predict , though more than a third of them said they’re not sure yet who they’ll vote for. The voting bloc will be crucial in the battleground state given that Hispanics comprise roughly 20 percent of the electorate there.

Trump has promised if reelected that he’ll carry out mass deportations, finish building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, end birthright citizenship and reinstitute his prohibition on people entering the U.S. from certain Muslim-majority nations. During his speech, he graphically recounted roughly a dozen cases of violent murder and rape allegedly committed by people who’ve entered the U.S. illegally.

“As Kamala gives her convention speech tonight, she will not mention the victims, she won't even talk about them — although now that she sees us, maybe she will,” Trump said. “She'll not say their names or express remorse to their families. Kamala says she wants to talk about the future. No, these people want to go back to the safe past. We don't have a future with open borders and all of the other problems.”

Trump also praised the Supreme Court’s ruling from earlier in the day that will allow Arizona to require new voters to submit proof of citizenship when they register to vote using a state form, but it’s unlikely to have broad impact because voters can use a federal form instead. It is illegal in the U.S. for noncitizens to vote and studies show it’s rare, but the Supreme Court was responding to an emergency appeal from the Republican National Committee.

“I give the Supreme Court great credit for this,” Trump said of the decision. “They have great courage in doing what they're doing.”

Trump early this year discouraged Republicans from agreeing to a bipartisan border deal that Biden backed. In turn, the president issued an executive order in June to suspend asylum cases when the border sees an average of 2,500 crossings a day over a seven day period. Illegal border crossings to plummeted as a result.

Undocumented immigration has not been a dominating theme at the DNC, compared with the Republican National Convention, which featured speeches from people whose loved ones had been victims of violent crime and drug overdoses. Three people affected by violent crime allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants appeared alongside Trump during his Arizona visit.

Alexis Nungaray took the lectern to talk about how her 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, was strangled to death. “Please take into consideration how important border control is,” she said, “because we are losing very innocent people to heinous crimes that shouldn’t be happening in the first place.”

Harris hasn’t granted interviews about her evolution on immigration laws since becoming the Democratic nominee. She previously supported decriminalizing border crossing and extending Medicare to everyone living in the U.S., regardless of immigration status.

Since then, Harris’ campaign has emphasized her support for the bipartisan border bill and her work fighting transnational gangs . She also visited a Customs and Border Protection processing center on the border city of El Paso, Texas, in June 2021 after facing criticisms from Republicans.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who was on Harris’ running mate shortlist, panned Trump’s visit to the border as a “photo op” during a call with reporters organized by the presidential campaign. “He said he wanted this for a campaign issue,” Kelly said of Trump urging Republicans to reject the legislation. “Trump and Vance, they only want to campaign on this issue,” he added. “Donald Trump did not fix this the last time he was in office, and he doesn’t really want to fix it now. “

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the former president’s running mate, argued in a press conference held ahead of Trump’s remarks that the bill had “nothing to do with border security” and instead codified existing executive orders.

He accused Harris of having “found Jesus about being tough on crime” when Biden dropped out of the race given that she had embraced her law-and-order image as a former prosecutor.

Republicans have also drawn attention to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General that found at least 32,000 unaccompanied minors haven’t shown up for their immigration court hearings in the last five years, making it difficult to track their whereabouts and making them vulnerable to exploitation.