LAS VEGAS — For weeks, Republicans have attacked Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration, blaming her for President Joe Bidenborder policies.
Now Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is trying to neutralize that line of attack, one of her biggest weaknesses with voters, by running a playbook that Democrats say worked for them in recent elections and asserting her clearest position yet as a tough person. criminal prosecutor focused on protecting the border.
This week, she responded by promising to increase border security if elected and criticizing her Republican opponent, former President donald trumpfor helping kill a bipartisan border agreement in Congress. And his campaign has walked back some of the more progressive positions he took during his bid for the Democratic nomination in 2019, including his position that migrants who cross the U.S. border without authorization should not face criminal sanctions.
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“I was attorney general of a border state,” Harris, once California’s top prosecutor, said Friday at a rally in Arizona, a swing state where immigration is a top concern for voters. “I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers. I sued them case after case and won.”
A day earlier, Harris’ campaign released a television ad highlighting her pivot. The ad, aimed at voters in swing states, promised that Harris would “hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.” He made no mention of immigrants already in the United States illegally – a top priority for many progressives and immigration activists – although in his speech in Arizona Harris stressed the importance of “comprehensive reform” that includes “a well-earned path to citizenship.”
No other Democratic candidate has taken such a tough stance on border security since Bill Clinton. His position reflects a shift in public opinion since Trump left the White House in 2021. More Americans, including many Democratic and Latino voters, have expressed support for hard-line immigration measures.
The shift in public opinion comes as Republicans step up their rhetoric against migrants. Border crossings have soared during the Biden administration, though more recently they have declined sharply since a Biden executive order aimed at cracking down on the border. The question for Harris is whether her new message as the party’s standard-bearer will come too late to voters who have already formed opinions about her record.
Senior Trump campaign officials called immigration one of Harris’ deepest vulnerabilities and sought to hold her responsible for the Biden administration’s policies, calling her the “border czar.” The title far exceeds the policy portfolio given to him by Biden, who asked him to address the root causes of migration from Latin America.
Democratic polls have raised similar concerns about Harris’ immigration record. Blueprint, a Democratic group, recently tested six potential Republican lines of attack on Harris — including labeling her the “border czar” — and found that those involving immigration were the most effective, even more so than attacks related to the economy and inflation.
Other polls have shown that voters have more confidence in Trump’s ability to handle border issues than in Harris’s. But if Harris can at least counter Republican arguments on immigration, she may be able to sway voters on more Democratic-friendly issues like abortion, her allies say.
The Harris campaign’s decision to frame her record as California attorney general as a “border state prosecutor” contrasts with how she ran in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Later, during a debate, she raised her hand in response to a question about whether people who are here illegally should be eligible for public health care.
For his part, Trump attacked Harris at the border in dark terms, engaging in fear-mongering about migrants and using dehumanizing language to falsely portray them as a threat to Americans.
“Every day, Kamala allows migrant criminals to roam freely to assault, rape, maim and kill our citizens,” the former president said at a rally in Montana on Friday.
Chris DeRose, a Republican who served as clerk of courts in Maricopa County, Arizona, said many undecided voters would doubt Harris’ rhetoric.
“She is part of the Biden-Harris administration,” DeRose said. “There will be some skepticism.”
But Harris and her allies have tried to turn Trump’s immigration record into a campaign issue of their own. This year, Trump successfully convinced Senate Republicans to kill a bill backed by Biden and Harris that would have effectively ordered the border closed to migrants when numbers reached certain levels and greatly expanded detentions and deportations.
“Donald Trump messed up the deal,” Harris said in Arizona, as a crowd of more than 15,000 supporters booed. “Because he thought doing so would help him win an election.”
Jen Cox, senior adviser to Harris’ campaign in Arizona, said that state’s Democrats, including Sen. Mark Kelly, won the election with tougher messages on immigration.
“Voters want people to get serious about really fixing the broken immigration system and securing the border,” Cox said in an interview. “They don’t want to see people make politics out of it.”
In a closely watched special election in New York this year, Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, won a competitive House race after criticizing Trump over the failed border deal and taking unusually tough positions for a member of his party, including calls for temporary closure down the border and deport migrants who attack the police.
“The most effective politician is the one who says what people already think,” said Suozzi. “And people are talking about this issue. They are very worried about this. And the vice president can continue to emphasize that, yes, we recognize this is a problem and we are willing to commit to solving the problem, unlike the other side.”
Harris’ campaign advisers say her shift to the center since the 2020 primaries has been shaped by her time as vice president.
Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican consultant focused on Latino voters, said Harris’ pledge to sign the border security bill, which did not include protections for immigrants already in the United States, and that the message focused in the safety of its new television ad reflected broader changes. among Democrats.
Since the Obama years, Democrats have sought to merge efforts to increase border security with calls to establish permanent pathways to legal residency and citizenship for the estimated 10 million immigrants without legal status in the United States — many of whom live in the United States. country for years. , keeping jobs, paying taxes and starting a family.
But the Latino electorate, the fastest growing segment of the voting bloc, now tends to be made up of third and fourth generation voters, more removed from the immigration experience, Madrid said.
“That doesn’t mean you have to act like Donald Trump on immigration,” he said. “That means you have to lead on border security and then incorporate the elements of immigration reform.”
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