Kamala Harris makes first visit to southern border as Democratic nominee

DOUGLAS, Ariz.– Too little, too late?Vice President Kamala Harris made her first visit to the US-Mexico border as the Democratic presidential nominee Friday to hastily announce measures meant to mitigate the ongoing border crisis fewer than 40 days before election day — despite having been the White House border “czar” for more than three-and-a-half years.Harris, 59, announced that if elected the 47th president, she would improve on an executive order announced by President Biden in June that barred migrants from applying for asylum when an average of 2,500 illegal migrants crossed the border for seven consecutive days.Under the Biden order, the emergency measure would be lifted when the average number of crossings dipped below 1,500 — which critics noted would still allow 1.8 million migrants into the US each year, even if strenuously enforced.Harris said her policy would make it more difficult to lift the emergency authority by mandating that the average number of crossings needed to reopen the border drop “below the current number of 1,500.”The Trump campaign slammed the trip to Douglas, Ariz.

as a last-ditch effort by Harris to salvage her image on the issue.“Why didn’t she fix it almost four years ago?” Trump asked reporters during a news conference at Trump Tower Thursday.“She’s got no plans, got no talent, got no ability to do it.”Douglas, a former mining town with a population of around 16,000, is located in US Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, one of the busiest for illegal crossings.Since Oct.

1, 2023, more than 452,000 migrant encounters have been recorded, according to United States Customs and Border Protection data.Although arrests have dropped since Biden’s June order, critics argue that the damage has already been done.“I think what has got to happen is, regardless of the administration, I think that at some places you do need to secure the border, primarily because of human trafficking,” Tom Moffett, a minister from ...