Harris vies with Trump on securing U.S. border; policies veer from longtime rhetoric

Kamala Harris compared deportation officers to the Ku Klux Klan during her time as a senator and hinted at abolishing their agency altogether. Once in office as vice president, Ms. Harris compared some Border Patrol agents to whip-wielding slave masters.

Now, as she seeks to win the White House on her own terms, Ms. Harris says Border Patrol agents are “very dedicated” and have “a tough job.”

She says she wants to send them reinforcements with 1,500 more agents and give their fellow border officers who man the ports of entry better technology to stop the smuggling of fentanyl.

It’s part of a massive makeover to patch one of the biggest political pitfalls of the Biden-Harris administration.

Ms. Harris’ major foray into immigration has been embracing a border bill written by three senators that calls for rewriting asylum rules to close the loopholes illegal immigrants have used to flood the country under President Biden. That plan is coupled with expulsion authority similar to the Title 42 pandemic policy Mr. Biden canceled more than a year ago.

“Stopping transnational criminal organizations and strengthening our border is not new to me, and it is a long-standing priority of mine,” she said at the border late last month — her first visit there in three years.

The bill she supports failed to clear the Democratic-led Senate, much less the Republican-controlled House. Ms. Harris’ hopes of reviving the legislation rely more on hope than political realities.

“It is therefore 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,” she said during her border visit.

She said the Border Patrol’s union endorsed the bill. The union clarified her claim by saying it wanted the Senate to take up the legislation to improve it.

Ms. Harris’ makeover has intrigued immigration policy experts who say it marks a major shift for the Democratic Party.

“While Republican and Democratic politicians may differ sharply in tone and nuance, today there is far more alignment between the two parties — at least on border policies — than at any point in the last two decades,” the Migration Policy Institute said in an analysis late last month.

Not everyone is buying the makeover.

The National Border Patrol Council has endorsed former President Donald Trump in the White House race.

“He has always stood with the men and women who protect this border, who put their lives on the line for the country,” NBPC President Paul Perez said at a rally in Arizona this month with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Perez he wants to hire 10,000 more Border Patrol agents. He called for 5,000 agents as president, but Congress never funded them.

Mr. Trump has also promised to finish his half-built border wall, revive his Remain in Mexico policy and strike new asylum agreements with Central American nations.

He said he would end the rampant use of “parole,” the legal authority the Biden-Harris administration has used to welcome millions of migrants who are, under the law, inadmissible aliens.

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow on immigration at The Heritage Foundation, said the two candidates bring wildly differing philosophies to the campaign trail.

He said he expects Mr. Trump would restore the “tested policies” that led to the lowest levels of illegal border crossings in decades. Ms. Harris, he predicted, would quickly reverse Mr. Biden’s “current fig-leaf attempt” to embrace get-tough rhetoric.

Jennie Murray, president of the National Immigration Forum, said Ms. Harris is doing a better job of tailoring herself to voters’ calls for a stricter border policy and a more generous approach for illegal immigrants now in the U.S. and those who come legally in the future.

“She has changed considerably, but what I would say about that is Americans have changed,” Ms. Murray said. “The ways that you’ve seen her change is she’s responding to where Americans are right now. I think Trump is trying to lead Americans to where he wants to see folks on the issue.”

Legal immigration

Mr. Trump declared on the “All-In” podcast this summer that he would extend automatic green cards to foreign students who earn a degree from a U.S. college.

“If you graduate from a college, I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Mr. Trump said.

The declaration seemed to surprise his campaign, which said the plan might not be so generous and should apply to only highly skilled graduates in critical fields of study.

Immigration rights activists say they think the campaign is closer to reality than Mr. Trump’s comments.

“We never saw him move any pro-immigration policies while in office,” Ms. Murray said.

She said she hopes Ms. Harris will follow Mr. Biden’s approach to expediting work-based visas, reducing backlogs and eliminating country visa caps that have limited legal immigration.

The two candidates would likely differ on the treatment of refugees.

When in office, Mr. Trump slashed the resettlement number. He said the U.S. needed a pause to work through a massive backlog of asylum cases.

Mr. Biden set a three-decade high for refugees in fiscal year 2024 while unleashing a massive asylum surge.

Experts said they expect Ms. Harris would continue Mr. Biden’s open refugee policy while a new Trump administration would ratchet down the numbers.

Mr. Trump has revived his idea of curtailing birthright citizenship through executive action. Scholars say a constitutional amendment would be required.

Interior

The most significant difference between the two candidates lies in how they would approach the millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S., including an estimated 4 million who have arrived and settled on Ms. Harris’ watch.

She hasn’t offered a specific plan but has suggested full legalization for at least some of those groups, including farmworkers and Dreamers, who came to the U.S. as children. She touts the Biden administration’s legalization framework submitted to Congress in early 2021, which envisioned a broad amnesty for most of the illegal immigrant population.

Mr. Trump counters with an aggressive enforcement agenda. The biggest question is how far he can go before he hits insurmountable legal, political or structural hurdles.

He has called for mass deportations. His advisers said they would first focus on those with criminal records. That would require the kinds of resources Congress has never been willing to provide, as well as battles with sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate in assisting deportations.

The former president also has a complicated history with Dreamers.

He tried to end the Obama-era DACA program that granted deportation amnesty to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants who arrived as children. In 2018, he angered many on his political right by proposing a bill to grant an amnesty — a full pathway to citizenship — to Dreamers in exchange for funding for his border wall and limits to some categories of legal immigration.

Congressional Democrats said they couldn’t stomach the trade-offs Mr. Trump was seeking in exchange for the amnesty.

Mr. Trump also tried to end the Temporary Protected Status program for some nations. Federal courts hampered those efforts.

Immigrant rights advocates expect Mr. Trump will renew those efforts if he returns to the White House.