Donald Trump may lose the election, but Kamala Harris is largely conceding he has won the argument on the border.
Both Trump and Harris are now pledging to impose some of the most restrictive immigration, asylum and border policies in decades.
Some immigration advocates on the left argue that Harris’ sudden election-year embrace of harsh rules has weakened her leverage to push for pathways to citizenship for select populations and other pro-immigration policies she supports.
Harris has shifted from framing herself as an advocate for the undocumented to touting herself as a former border state prosecutor who will be more effective than Trump on the southern border.
If elected, Harris is pledging to curtail who’s able to claim asylum, and pursue criminal charges for illegal border crossings. She’d also continue building a border wall.
Harris told a crowd in Nevada recently: “I will protect our nation’s sovereignty, secure our border and work to fix our broken system of immigration.”
Recently, her campaign began airing an ad in which a narrator declares: “We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that’s Kamala Harris.”
Some Democrats have been frustrated that Harris and the Biden administration recently embraced restrictions on asylum that resemble Trump policies they once opposed.
Andrea Flores, a former Biden White House official who worked on immigration, lamented that Biden’s team tried to get tougher asylum restrictions, but Republicans then started criticizing immigrants who are here legally through programs that allow them to stay in the U.S. temporarily — moving the goalposts once again.
“The fact that [the Biden administration] had to amend their latest asylum restriction after three months shows that this is the wrong approach. We don’t have to choose between a functional asylum system and a secure border.”
Harris now backs changes to make the restrictions longer-lasting.
The other side: Biden and Harris argue their asylum restrictions are better than Trump’s previous attempts because of new ways they offer people to enter the country legally to seek protection — through an app and programs that allow certain populations to stay in the U.S. temporarily while they’re applying to stay permanently.
But these programs never guaranteed a pathway to stay in the U.S. permanently.
The administration has decided not to extend the temporary protections through these programs for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians — leaving potentially hundreds of thousands of people in legal limbo.
Harris has promised to crack down on criminal prosecutions of illegal border crossings, after repeatedly saying she wanted to decriminalize them in 2019. She now supports extending rules that essentially cut off access to asylum to anyone who crosses the border illegally — forcing them back into Mexico or rapidly returning them to their home country.
In 2019, she criticized similar policies: “These families seeking asylum are often fleeing extreme violence. And what happens when they arrive? Trump says, ‘Go back to where you came from.’
“Harris continues to out the bipartisan border bill that Trump pushed Republicans in Congress to reject. It includes hundreds of millions of dollars for border wall construction.
In 2019, Harris was one of five Senate Democrats to vote against a border security spending bill that triggered a lengthy government shutdown.
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