Harris visits US-Mexico border to show her record more than Trump criticism

Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at Arizona's border with Mexico, making her first visit to the international boundary since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee as she confronts one of her biggest vulnerabilities ahead of the November election.

Harris on Friday stepped out of her motorcade on a dusty desert road outside Douglas, Arizona, and shook hands with two men from the US Border Patrol. Harris, wearing sunglasses, slacks and a black coat, chatted with the uniformed agents as they walked along the rust-colored border wall in temperatures that neared 100 degrees.

Later, she was expected to call for further tightening asylum restrictions, breaking from President Joe Biden's policy on an issue where her rival, former President Donald Trump, has an edge.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have pounded Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration's record on migration and fault the vice president for spending little time visiting the border during her time in the White House.

Harris will outline her plan to crack down further on asylum claims and keep the restrictions in place longer compared to the executive order that Biden signed this summer, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity because Harris had not yet made the announcement. The official briefed reporters aboard Air Force 2 en route to Arizona.

Harris met with Mayor Donald Huish, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and County Supervisor Ann English, along with Sen. Mark Kelly and Attorney General Kris Mayes.

Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and one that contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Trump has an edge with voters on migration, and Harris has gone on offense to improve her standing on the issue and defuse a key line of political attack for Trump.

In nearly every campaign speech she gives, Harris recounts how a sweeping bipartisan package aiming to overhaul the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged top Republicans to oppose it.

"The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games, Harris plans to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks previewed by her campaign.

After the immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that bar migrants from being granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. Since then, arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen.

Harris will also use her trip to remind voters about her work as attorney general of California in confronting crime along the border. During an August rally in Glendale, outside Phoenix, she talked about helping to prosecute drug- and people-smuggling gangs that operated transnationally and at the border.

I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won, Harris said then.

Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, at 27 the youngest member of Congress and a leading advocate for Harris with young and Hispanic voters, said that in backing stricter enforcement, Harris is trying to strike a chord and she understands that, right now, there is a crisis at the border. It's a humanitarian crisis.

That's why she's pushing for more resources at the border so that we have an orderly process, which is really important, Frost said. But, the thing is, that's where Donald Trump stops, is just at enforcement.

The vice president's trip to Douglas thrusts the issue of immigration into the brightest spotlight yet less than six weeks before Election Day.

Douglas is an overwhelmingly Democratic border town in GOP-dominated Cochise County, where the Republicans on the board of supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results. Trump was in the area last month, using a remote stretch of border wall and a pile of steel beams to draw a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.

The town of 16,000 people has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy port of entry that's slated for a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned with making legal border crossings more efficient as they are with combatting illegal ones.