- Trump has called for rapid and historic deportations of millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally.
- Harris once supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, but has shifted her stance significantly.
Former President Donald Trump calls migrants invaders and criminals who are stealing jobs, “poisoning the blood of our country” and eating people’s pets, among other unfounded and inflammatory claims. Vice President Kamala Harris, the child of immigrants from India and Jamaica, celebrates the immigrant story as central to the country’s promise.
The issue has been the central motivation for Trump and his supporters since he began his first run for president in 2015 with a pledge to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay for it. It continues to be one of his top advantages in polls as Americans have seen record numbers of people stopped at the border during the Biden-Harris administration.
Harris, who once supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, has responded to the political liability by toughening her stance on the border, hoping to win over voters who see Trump’s rhetoric and plans for historically large deportations as too harsh. But she has not explained her shifting policy views.
Trump has labeled Harris the “border czar” because President Biden tasked her with improving conditions in certain Central American countries to reduce migration from them. But she did not have direct responsibility over the border or immigration policy.
Mass deportations
Trump has called for rapid and historic deportations of the estimated 11 million immigrants — he says there are more — who are in the country illegally. He wants the National Guard and U.S. military, as well as police forces in cooperative states, to go door-to-door in a process that he recently said would be a “bloody story.” He has not ruled out creating detention camps to hold people awaiting deportation, though he has maintained that the removals would be so fast, camps would not be necessary.
Policy experts doubt it would be so easy.
“It’s not just simply putting someone on a plane and sending them back to their country,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
Officials would have to locate the immigrants, who are often living in the shadows, and then disrupt families and local economies to remove them, she said. They would also need to negotiate with other governments — some uncooperative, others ill-equipped — to verify immigrants’ identities and accept them, and then find airplanes to send people back, she said.
‘Build the wall’
Trump promised in 2016 that he would erect a wall along the southern border and that Mexico would pay for it. He had about 500 miles of barrier built during his four years in office, most of it replacing existing fences and walls. Mexico did not pay for it.
Harris has called the border wall a “stupid” use of money, though the Biden administration is continuing to erect about 20 miles of new barriers under legislation signed by Trump. And she has pledged to sign a bipartisan border bill negotiated this year that includes hundreds of millions of dollars to continue construction.
Tough bipartisan bill
When she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Harris supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings. She has said as far back as 2017 that people who try to come into the country illegally are not criminals.
But as the Biden administration encountered record arrivals at the border, she shifted significantly. She supported a Biden administration executive action in June that severely limited asylum claims, and her campaign has said she no longer believes crossing illegally should be decriminalized.
Harris has also promised to sign the tough border bill, negotiated with Republicans this year, that would add 1,500 border agents and 10,000 detention beds, and double the number of deportation flights. The bill would have also sped up the asylum process and expanded visa and green card availability. It contains nothing for the so-called Dreamers who were brought to the country illegally when they were minors.
Trump effectively killed the bill for the time being by telling Republican lawmakers to oppose it so he could use the issue more effectively in his campaign.
Paths to legal status
Harris has also pledged to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, something that has not been done since the Reagan administration four decades ago.
She hasn’t given details or endorsed frameworks from the past, but said in her Democratic National Convention speech last month and on her website that it would include “strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship” for people in the country illegally.
Trump promised on his website to “deliver a merit-based immigration system that protects American labor and promotes American values.”
When he was president, he endorsed a merit-based proposal that would have slashed the number of immigrants allowed into the country legally and stopped prioritizing family members of legal residents. That plan failed in Congress, and Trump killed a separate bill that would have given legal protections to Dreamers in exchange for tighter border security.
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