On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in Douglas, Arizona, where she promised to “work across the aisle” with Republicans to pass multi-billion dollar legislation that will greatly increase the size of the border police while drastically curtailing the democratic rights of workers and their families in the US and internationally.
Ahead of her speech, the Harris campaign released another 30-second advertisement touting her record as a “border state attorney general” and her pledges to “hire thousands more border agents.”
Framing herself as a more competent “deporter-in-chief” than former President Donald Trump, in her 25-minute speech Harris repeatedly attacked Trump for tanking a previously negotiated anti-immigrant bill. The legislation would have earmarked nearly $20 billion to hire 1,500 more border cops and over 100 more immigration judges, while greatly expanding the capacity of the detention facilities.
“Donald Trump tanked it,” Harris said, adding that “he prefers to run on a problem rather than fixing a problem.”
The border bill, while providing funding for new invasive technologies and cameras for the border wall, offers no pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers”—undocumented immigrants that were brought to the US as children and have lived and attended school here their whole lives.
In her speech Friday, Harris characterized the bill as the “strongest border security bill in decades,” noting that it had been endorsed by the Trump-aligned “Border Patrol union.”
“Even though Donald Trump tried to sabotage the border security bill, it is my pledge to you that as president of the United States I will bring back up and proudly sign it into law,” Harris declared.
Harris and the Democrats have completely adopted the Republican anti-immigrant platform and dropped any and all language about “abolishing ICE.” Instead, immigration is now a “problem” that needs to be “solved” with more police, deportations and stricter laws that limit access to asylum.
Harris attack Trump from the right and said that “the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”
As Republicans increasingly embrace Trump’s neo-Nazi-inspired rhetoric concerning immigrants, Harris declared that she will “reach across the aisle and embrace common sense approaches and new technologies to get the job done.”
Chastising Trump for failing to be a “team player” in this bipartisan war on immigrants, Harris added, “It is ... critically important that anybody who calls themselves a leader would work with other leaders for common sense solutions, understanding the pain and the suffering that Americans are experiencing if we don’t work together to fix these problems.”
Downplaying the fascist content of Trump’s speeches, Harris added, “We must work together in real time, grounded on finding common sense approaches, not just about some rhetoric at a rally but actually doing the work of fixing a problem.”
In an extraordinary appeal, Harris added, “As president I will not only bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump tanked, I will do more to secure our border to reduce illegal border crossings.”
She pledged to take
further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry. Those who cross our borders unlawfully, will be apprehended, removed and barred from entry for five years. 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.
While Harris attacked Trump from the right over his “failure to lead,” she never once explicitly defended Haitian immigrants from the ongoing terror campaign, spearheaded by Trump and Vance, that has closed schools and public buildings in Springfield, Ohio. Instead she lightly chastised Trump for making the “challenges at the border worse” and “fanning the flames of fear and division.”
In a statement on X, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US president Joseph Kishore remarked:
Harris’s trip to AZ says everything about the nature of the Democratic Party. Instead of exposing Trump’s fascism, Harris is currying favor with the far right with pledges to escalate attacks on immigrants.
Hours before Harris spoke in Arizona, Trump campaigned in Walker, Michigan, where he delivered another fascist tirade in front of a few hundred supporters. Stoking right-wing militia violence, Trump again promised to deport legal immigrants from Springfield, Ohio.
Trump blamed Harris for turning “cherished small towns into blighted refugee camps.”
Continuing the racist terror campaign against Haitian immigrants, Trump said,
You take a look at what’s happening in Springfield, Ohio. And the mayor is a nice man, in fact, I think he’s an independent or a Republican. And he doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t know what to say—he wants to be nice. 32,000 people, you have 50,000 residents, beautiful place, beautiful nice town, no crime, no nothing.
They now have 32,000 people dumped into the town, and he’s trying to say, “We are working very hard to make it comfortable for them.” No, those people have to be taken out and brought back to the country from where they came, I’m sorry.
Trump added that: “It’s not fair, it’s not sustainable by any country what is happening to us in the United States.”
Threatening to prosecute Harris for allowing the “invasion” Trump snarled,
Kamala Harris betrayed her oath. She let our cities fail to violent gangs, she let our American sons and daughters be raped and murdered at the hands of vicious monsters. She let American communities be conquered, they are conquering your communities!
Trump called this “unforgivable” and “a crime,” adding, “There is no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation, and that’s what she has done, she’s ruined our nation.”