WASHINGTON — All of a sudden, Kamala Harris is talking about the border — and relishing it.
As Harris prepares to barnstorm battleground states this week along with her soon-to-be-announced running mate, her campaign is banking on an issue that, until recently, Democrats had ceded to Republicans and Donald Trump: immigration.
“The vice president has a compelling story to tell about prosecuting transnational gangs and drug traffickers as the attorney general of a border state,” a campaign official said. “That record will make it harder for the Trump camp’s attacks on her to stick.”
It’s a remarkable turnaround for a party that until this year had largely avoided the subject — and as Republicans have tried to make it a vulnerability for Harris, arguing she is responsible for the ongoing flow of migrants at the southern border.
But in front of a cheering crowd in Atlanta last week, Harris was all smiles as she seemed to enjoy touting her border bona fides as California’s attorney general.
“In that job, I walked underground tunnels between the United States and Mexico,” she said. “I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers that came into our country illegally. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”
The turning point
For Democrats, the shift in messaging began this year when Trump urged House Republicans to kill a bipartisan border funding bill negotiated in the Senate. At the time, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he preferred different legislation introduced in the House, and he argued that the Senate bill didn’t go far enough.
One of those negotiators, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., was furious. It wasn’t just that Republicans had tanked the Senate bill; it was that they’d been so blatant about it.
“We did not go into these negotiations thinking this was about politics,” Murphy said in an interview. “But after Republicans smashed it to pieces, we’d have been fools not to take the gift-wrapped political advantage.”
Murphy said Democrats immediately conducted polling on the issue and days later made it a focus of a congressional special election in New York. Democrat Tom Suozzi made immigration one of his key arguments in the closing days of the campaign — and won.
“They were abandoning a very good border compromise because Trump told them to,” Murphy said. “It was the transparency of Republicans that made this a layup politically.”
The victory in New York signaled to Democrats that they might be able to flip the script on immigration. Still, though President Joe Biden tried to ramp up his attacks on Trump over immigration — and issued an executive action last month that tightened border restrictions — polls consistently showed he failed to gain much traction.
Now, Democrats hope Harris — the former prosecutor — can make a more convincing case.
“Donald Trump does not care about border security,” Harris said loudly at the Atlanta rally to loud applause. “He only cares about himself.”
‘Root causes’
Shortly after he took office, Biden tasked Harris with overseeing diplomatic efforts with the Northern Triangle — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. At the time, there was an influx of unaccompanied migrant children from the region.
Harris repeatedly said she would examine the “root causes” of that migration, which the Biden administration said was due in part to typical immigration cycles, as well as major hurricanes and the coronavirus pandemic. Republicans labeled Harris the “border czar.” The White House rejected the title. Instead, Harris’ team highlighted that her efforts to tackle the root causes of migration raked in billions of dollars in private-sector commitments, but they argued she was not responsible for daily fluctuations in illegal border crossings.
As NBC News reported last year, a former Biden administration aide said it was no secret that Harris, who was not as steeped in foreign policy as Biden, was wary of taking on the migration issues when he gave her the assignment. She instead preferred being an aggressive messenger on the issue of reproductive rights.
Some immigration advocates argued the Biden administration more generally had ignored the border.
“I think that the two go hand in hand,” said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration attorney in Harlingen, Texas, referring to the distinction between longer-term and shorter-term solutions. “Because if there’s an effective plan or policy to deal with ‘root causes,’ then that should alleviate the issues that we see at the border.”
At the New York Times Dealbook Summit in November, Harris reiterated the administration’s position that the immigration system was broken — but that it was up to Congress to act on a legislative fix.
“It needs to be repaired, and we are working on that in a way that we establish a safe and humane and orderly immigration system at the border,” Harris said. “There are political games being played with this because, in November of ’24, some people have decided that may be the best weapon against an incumbent Democrat.”
Still, her allies were frustrated trying to draw a distinction between the official assignment given to her and how her political opponents defined it. Early in the Biden administration, Harris’ press secretary — after having fielded several questions about her boss’ handling of immigration issues — gave a blunt response at an informal briefing with reporters.
“The vice president is not doing the border,” Symone Sanders said. “The president asked the vice president to take on the diplomatic efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle to address the root causes of migration.”
(Sanders has since left the vice president’s office and is now an MSNBC host.)
Questions about Harris’ role in shaping immigration policy — or lack thereof — have persisted throughout her time in office. Memorably, in June 2021, she drew criticism after an interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt when she insisted that “we’ve been to the border” — despite having made no trips there as vice president. She ended up making a trip to El Paso, Texas, a few weeks later.
As illegal border crossings soared, Harris’ critics blamed the Biden administration — and Harris herself.
“I think everybody would agree she’s been missing in action,” said Chris Cabrera, a spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council.
At his rally in Atlanta on Saturday, Trump slammed Harris.
“For 3½ years, ‘border czar’ Harris has allowed terrorists and criminals to pour across our wide-open border,” he said. “And now she’s denying it.”
‘An active mistake’
Still, migrant crossings have dropped dramatically over the last few months after Biden tightened the asylum rules. Now that the numbers are down, Harris’ allies argue that Republicans are making an “active mistake” by trying to link her to them.
“If you’re going to say she’s the ‘border czar,’” a Harris aide said, “she also owns that border crossings are at a record low.”
Publicly, Harris campaign officials are reluctant to directly compare the success of Biden’s messaging on the issue with hers. But at the same, they seem much more optimistic and eager to talk about immigration.
For Murphy, the senator, it’s a clear opportunity to win over voters in November. He’s convinced that swing voters will not like the immigration policies Trump is promising — including mass deportations — and will side with Democrats.
“We have to prove to people that we are not just compassionate,” Murphy said, “but that we are also tough.”
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