Harris to propose toughening Biden’s asylum clampdown during border visit

Vice President Kamala Harris plans to announce Friday that not only would she keep in place President Joe Biden’s sweeping asylum crackdown if she wins the White House, but that she would take it even further.

During her border visit in Douglas, Arizona, the vice president will propose toughening the president’s policy that suspends asylum claims in between ports of entry when border crossings reach a certain threshold, per a senior campaign official, who was granted anonymity to not get ahead of the vice president’s speech. The senior campaign official did not provide further details of Harris’ proposal.

It’s a striking and aggressive move from Harris in the final stretch of the campaign, as she doubles down on her efforts to cut into former President Donald Trump’s advantage with voters on immigration. The new proposal comes as the vice president makes her first trip to the southern border as the Democratic nominee, when she also plans to emphasize her opponent’s role in killing the bipartisan border deal.

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

Biden’s clampdown on asylum has been beneficial for the Harris campaign: Border crossings are now as low as they were during Trump’s last month in office, providing the vice president with a beneficial datapoint to tout on the trail.

This summer, after the collapse of the bipartisan border deal — which Trump personally lobbied to kill — Biden issued an executive action and accompanying rule that allowed him to suspend asylum claims in between ports of entry when there is an average of 2,500 crossings a day over a seven-day period. Once a shutdown is in effect, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas can reopen the border after crossings have fallen below 1,500 crossings for seven consecutive days — a threshold that hasn’t been met since the shutdown began in June.

Harris’ plans to make it even more difficult to lift the border restrictions speaks to her advisers’ continued concerns with the issue. But aides cite recent polling showing Trump’s eroding support on the issue since Biden exited the race, in what they believe provides a fresh opportunity for the vice president to go on the offensive.

That’s part of the reason Harris wanted to travel to the border on Friday to reiterate this message, speaking in a community on the front lines of the immigration challenge, according to a senior campaign official. On the ground, she will visit the Raul H. Castro port of entry, where she’ll receive a briefing on the efforts to disrupt the flow of fentanyl through the southern border, according to a White House official. Harris will also meet with border agents and argue that they need more resources, while calling on the Chinese government to crack down on companies that make the chemicals used to make fentanyl. She will be joined by Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes.

The visit comes as Trump continues to pummel Harris on immigration, labeling her a “border czar” to exaggerate her work on addressing the root causes of migration in the 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. His campaign slammed the vice president ahead of the visit, saying that voters are “smart enough to realize that Kamala Harris has been in charge of the border for four years and she has failed.”

“Kamala’s last-minute trip to the border and empty calls for more security 39 days before the election will not rewrite the past 44 months of chaos, crime, and bloodshed caused by her open border policy. Over the past four years as Vice President, Kamala laughed when asked why she hadn't visited the border, denied the existence of a crisis, and pushed for mass amnesty,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Speaking to a crowd in Walker, Michigan, on Friday, Trump cited new data the Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief sent this week to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) showing that more than half a million noncitizens have criminal histories. Over 425,000 of those were convicted criminals who were not detained, according to the data, of which over 13,000 were convicted of homicide as of July 21.

“This is bad timing for Kamala to show up today at the border,” Trump said. “She didn’t go there for four years. Now today she shows up, these numbers got released. Somebody doesn’t like her, I think.”

In countering Trump, Harris’ strategy pulls 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. Democrats across the country have adopted an aggressive posture on the issue since the collapse of the border legislation earlier this year, solidifying the party’s notable shift on immigration.

While Democrats have been relieved that Harris has quickly found her footing on the vexing issue, some allies and immigration advocates have been frustrated that the vice president hasn’t talked 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 rhetoric and his promises to implement mass deportations offers Harris an opportunity to relitigate his controversial family separation policy.

Trump said that immigrants are “ruining the fabric of our country” during his Michigan rally, reprising his now-familiar attacks on the cities of Springfield, Ohio and Aurora, Colorado, for resettling Haitian and Venezuelan refugees.

Harris is expected to thread the needle with her approach by speaking on Friday about the need to create an orderly and humane immigration system, arguing that the country must prioritize both security and protecting its “legacy as a nation of immigrants.”