By Trevor Hunnicutt
DOUGLAS, Arizona (Reuters) -Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign on Friday, calling for tighter asylum restrictions and vowing to make stopping fentanyl from entering the U.S. a “top priority.”
Harris spoke in Douglas, Arizona, a border town of less than 17,000 people, on Friday, where she accused her Republican rival Donald Trump of “fanning the flames of fear and division,” over the impact of immigrants on American life.
Harris called for more punitive measures for people crossing the border illegally, following an asylum ban for those entering the U.S. illegally established by President Joe Biden this year.
“I will take further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry. Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years,” Harris said.
“We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators, and if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum,” she said.
But Harris also said that her policy would forge a path for a humane immigration program.
“I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”
Some 7 million migrants have been arrested illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration, according to government data, a record high number that has fueled criticism from Trump.
But illegal border crossings have dropped sharply since Biden announced the asylum ban earlier this year.
In Douglas, Harris spoke to Customs and Border Protection officials and viewed part of a border barrier constructed between 2011 and 2012, during the Obama administration, the White House said.
Harris also received a briefing on the CBP’s drug enforcement operations and viewed inspection technology used to seize illegal drugs, including fentanyl, the campaign said, noting that border officials stopped more fentanyl at ports of entry in 2022 and 2023 than in the previous five fiscal years combined.
Harris was introduced by Theresa Guerrero, whose 31-year-old son Jacob Guerrero died from fentanyl poisoning. She accused Trump of blocking a comprehensive border security bill that would have stemmed the flow of fentanyl.
Harris said she would target the “entire global fentanyl supply chain” to materially and sustainably disrupt the flow of illicit fentanyl, calling on China to do more to crack down on fentanyl precursor chemicals.
Fentanyl overdoses have surged to become the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. Over 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2023.
Trump and his running mate JD Vance have increased their criticism of immigrants in recent weeks, repeating falsehoods about legal Haitian immigrants in Vance’s home state of Ohio and suggesting that immigrants were committing crimes and stealing jobs from U.S. citizens.
Immigration is a top issue for voters. Arizona is a closely contested election state, with a high population of Latino voters sought by both parties. And the nation’s porous southern border remains a source of fentanyl, a leading cause of drug overdoses in the United States.
On Friday, Trump blamed Harris for the rising trend of irregular migration.
“The architect of this destruction is Kamala Harris,” Trump said at Trump Tower in Manhattan. “She keeps talking about how she supposedly wants to fix the border. We would merely ask, Why didn’t she do it four years ago? It’s a very simple question.”
He also accused Harris of turning small towns in the U.S. into “blighted refugee camps.”
A wide-ranging border security bill that took months to negotiate was blocked by the U.S. Senate in February, after Trump pressed Republicans to reject any compromise.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found that 43% of voters favored Trump on the issue of immigration and 33% favored Harris, while 24% either didn’t know, chose someone else or refused to answer.
Harris was California’s attorney general before being elected to the U.S. Senate and then vice president. Her California remit included targeting gangs that operate on both sides of the border and traffic in drugs, guns and people.
Biden also tasked Harris with dealing with the root causes of migration from Central America, a diplomatic issue on which her record is mixed.
Emigration from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia to the United States has created unease among voters concerned about what the trend means for the U.S. economy, crime rates and culture. The share of American residents born abroad rose by nearly a fifth to 47.8 million from 2010 to 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; additional reporting by Steve Holland and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Heather Timmons, Miral Fahmy, Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler)
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