PHOENIX (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted endorsements from border city mayors in the swing state of Arizona on Monday as she tries to blunt the impact of Republican criticism of her handling of illegal border crossings.
Harris’ campaign said she was supported by the mayors of Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton and San Luis, as well as Yuma County Supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes.
A week after her sudden promotion to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris is launching her campaign and refining her pitch to voters with less than 100 days until Election Day. Republicans are trying to make the border a political liability for Harris, just as it was for the president Joe Biden before ending his re-election campaign.
Republicans say Harris has not done enough to crack down on illegal immigration, in a role they characterize as Biden’s “border czar.” House Republicans and a handful of vulnerable Democrats voted last week to scold Harris about the administration’s border policies.
The border endorsements, which are part of a list of Arizona backers that Harris plans to announce on Monday, offer a potential response to those criticisms, especially in the only swing state that shares a border with Mexico.
“I trust she will meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain like her opponent,” Somerton Mayor Gerardo Anaya said in a statement. Somerton is a city of about 14,000 people in the southwest of the state. corner.
As vice president, Harris was responsible for supervising diplomatic efforts to deal with issues that encourage migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressuring them to strengthen enforcement at their own borders. The Biden administration intended to develop and implement a long-term strategy that gets to the root causes of migration from these countries.
Immigration has been at the center of Trump’s political identity since he announced his first campaign in 2015. He paints a picture of a border that is out of control, threatening national security and the economy. If he is elected to a second term, he has committed to deporting millions of people living in the country illegally.
Biden has sought to crack down on new arrivals at the border and offer new immigration pathways.
The restrictions he announced in early June cut off access to asylum when arrivals at the border reached a certain number, infuriating immigration advocates who say the policy differs little from what Trump attempted. Then, a few weeks later, Biden announced a new program intended for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens who have been in the country for a decade or more, which could ultimately provide them with a path to citizenship.
Prisons at the border fell from record levels last December.
