Harris to accuse Trump of ‘playing political games’ with immigration in border visit

When Vice President Kamala Harris makes her first trip to the southern border as the Democratic nominee, it will mark a major step in her effort to cut into Donald Trump’s strength with voters on immigration.

The issue is one of her top vulnerabilities. And Harris is going on the attack. She will use the stop in Douglas, Arizona, to call for tougher border security, while once again emphasizing Trump’s role in killing the bipartisan border deal earlier this year, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to speak about Friday’s speech.

The campaign will also launch a new ad in Arizona and battleground states, highlighting her plan to “hire more border agents, enforce the law and step up technology and stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking.”

“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris will say, according to her prepared remarks.

Voters continue to give Trump higher marks on immigration despite the vice president spending the last several months leaning into her record as attorney general of California to tout her work prosecuting international gangs and criminal organizations who traffic drugs, guns and humans. She’s also vowed to bring back the border bill if she wins the White House.

“Donald Trump got word of the bill, realized it was going to fix a problem he wanted to run on, and told them to kill the bill, don’t put it up for a vote,” Harris said during her interview Wednesday night with MSNBC. “He killed a bill that would have actually been a solution, because he wants to run on a problem, instead of fixing a problem.”

According to the senior campaign official, Harris wanted to travel to the border to reiterate this message, speaking in a community on the frontlines of the immigration challenge. She will meet with border patrol agents on Friday, her campaign said, and she plans to say that agents need more resources. The border bill she supported would have hired 1,500 more border agents and officers and was endorsed by the Border Patrol union.

The vice president will also talk about fentanyl and press the Chinese government to crack down on companies that make the chemicals used to make the drug.

The visit comes as Trump continues to pummel Harris on immigration, misleadingly labeling her a “border czar” to exaggerate her work on addressing the root causes of migration in the Joe Biden administration. On the day of Harris’ acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last month, Trump visited Cochise County, Arizona — the same county Harris will visit — to blame her for the border crisis.

He slammed Harris again on Thursday for her plans to visit the border, knocking her during a press conference in New York City for “playing right into the hand of her opponent.” He also continued to rail against the border bill, which he called “atrocious” and an “amnesty bill.”

“She should save her airfare. She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border,” Trump said. “Instead, she’s going there to try and convince people that she wasn’t as bad as everybody knows she was. She was the worst in history, grossly incompetent, weak and ineffective.”

Harris has previously visited the border in her capacity as vice president. But early on in the Biden administration, she drew negative headlines after a rocky sit-down with NBC’s Lester Holt, who asked why she hadn’t visited the border. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said — a clip Republicans have continued to recycle as they slam Harris on an issue into which they’ve poured millions of dollars.

Those comments came when the White House was struggling with immigration staff turnover and widespread confusion over its policy and messaging. Now, more than three years laters, Democrats have coalesced around a consistent, election-year message: Democrats want solutions, while Trump killed a bipartisan border deal for political gain.

After the collapse of the border legislation, Democrats adopted an aggressive posture on the issue, pulling a page directly from Rep. Tom Suozzi ’s playbook after he won his February special election in New York by running on strengthening border security.

Harris advisers believe this message is finally breaking through to some voters, though there’s more work to be done — as evidenced by Harris’ decision to visit the border.

Harris may also benefit from some facts on the ground, which she is expected to tout during her speech on Friday. Border crossings are now as low as they were during Trump’s last month in office, averting media coverage of an overwhelmed southern border just weeks away from Election Day. After the border deal collapsed in February, Biden clamped down on asylum at the southern border in between ports of entry, which has led to a steep drop in illegal crossings — providing Harris with a datapoint to hammer on the trail.

While Democrats have been relieved by Harris’ messaging on border security, some allies and immigration advocates have been quietly pushing for the vice president to talk more about the need for relief for undocumented immigrants who have long lived in the United States, trying to navigate a broken immigration system. And they believe Trump’s promises to implement mass deportations offers Harris an opportunity to relitigate his controversial family separation policy.

The senior campaign official said Harris will speak on Friday about the need to secure the border while also creating an orderly and humane immigration system, arguing that the country must prioritize both security and protecting its “legacy as a nation of immigrants.”

Lisa Kashinksy contributed to this report.