With the crisis at the southern border now a centerpiece of the 2024 presidential election, Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio on Thursday slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for her handling of the crisis, days after his campaign sought to draw a contrast between himself and former President Trump on the hot-button issue.
“Until you see it with your own eyes, you can’t believe how terrible the Kamala Harris administration’s policies have been when it comes to the southern border,” Vance said in Cochise County, Ariz. “When this administration took office and Kamala Harris took office, from day one, they stopped deportations. They stopped construction of the border wall.”
Vance leveraged Republican arguments that the Biden administration has ended successful Trump-era policies and created chaos at the border.
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Vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) spoke to reporters on Thursday during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Hereford, Arizona. (Grace Trejo/Arizona Daily Star via The Associated Press)
“The border wall is waiting to be completed behind us, but because of the Kamala Harris administration, it can’t happen. The administration has reinstated capture and release measures and prohibited people from remaining in Mexico,” he continued. “So, all asylum seekers who come to the border can now be released into our country because they will not be forced to remain in Mexico while we adjudicate their asylum claims.”
Vance also said border security is “not rocket science.”
“We need to reinstitute common sense policies. We need to reinstitute the remain in Mexico policy. We need to end the capture and release policy,” he said. “We need to force asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are being heard. And we need to finish this border wall and reinstitute deportations.”
Vance’s visit to the border comes after former President Trump also said he may visit the border multiple times before November.
Republicans have harshly criticized Harris for her leadership not only on the crisis at the southern border but also on international diplomacy to address its root causes, with Harris dubbed the “border czar” by the media and Republicans.
But Harris fired back, with a group of mayors from border towns in Arizona expressing their support, saying they “applaud Harris’ long record of fighting to secure the border and fix our broken immigration system, including her work as California Attorney General to pursue international criminal organizations trafficking arms and drugs, and her tough White House border policies that have reduced border crossings to their lowest levels in years.”
Harris released an ad this week to contrast her support for a bipartisan border bill unveiled by the Senate that would increase border funding and impose some restrictions on entry into the U.S. The Biden administration has said the bill would help solve the border crisis, but Trump and his allies have blocked it.
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In the video, Harris claims she has “led to the lowest border crossings on record and has worked to keep communities safe throughout her career,” and accuses President Trump of “siding with drug traffickers and drug cartels to block the strongest and fairest border security reforms in decades.”
The Trump campaign quickly condemned the video.
“Everything in Kamala’s border ad is a complete lie. The truth is that President Trump handed the toughest border in history to the Biden-Harris Administration, who have erased all of his good policies and opened up the border,” the Trump campaign said. “As Border Commissioner, Kamala Harris oversaw the worst immigration crisis in American history, enabled drug cartels to smuggle deadly fentanyl across the border, and allowed more than 11 million illegal criminals and terrorists from around the world to enter the United States.”
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a campaign rally in Atlanta on Tuesday. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
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Harris criticized Trump at a rally in Atlanta earlier this week, saying he “talks big about securing the border but doesn’t do anything about it.”
She accused the former president of “destroying a bipartisan agreement because he thought it would help him win the election” and vowed that “as president, I will reinstate the border security bill that Donald Trump killed.”
After Vance’s speech on Thursday, the Harris campaign attacked both Trump and Vance.
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“Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are not offering the American people solutions, they are only spreading insults, confusion and fear. They don’t want to secure our border, they only want to spread fear. They don’t want to help working families, and their Project 2025 plan will only hurt them,” said Harris campaign spokesman James Singer.
Fox News’ Greg Norman and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
