Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris has visited the US-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign, calling for tighter asylum restrictions and vowing to make stopping fentanyl from entering the United States a "top priority".
Harris spoke on Friday in Douglas, Arizona, a border town of less than 17,000 people, where she accused her Republican rival Donald Trump of "fanning the flames of fear and division" over the impact of immigrants on American life.
Harris called for more punitive measures for people crossing the border illegally, following an asylum ban for those entering the US illegally established by President Joe Biden this year.
"I will take further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry. Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years," she said.
"We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators, and if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum."
But Harris also said that her policy would forge a path for a humane immigration program.
"I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane," she said. "
We can and we must do both."
Some seven million migrants have been arrested illegally crossing the US-Mexico border during the Biden administration, according to government data, a record number that has fuelled criticism from Trump.
But illegal border crossings have dropped sharply since Biden announced the asylum ban earlier in 2024.
Harris said she would target the "entire global fentanyl supply chain" to materially and sustainably disrupt the flow of illicit fentanyl, calling on China to do more to crack down on fentanyl precursor chemicals.
Fentanyl overdoses have surged to become the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. Over 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2023.
Trump and his running mate JD Vance have increased their criticism of immigrants in recent weeks, repeating falsehoods about legal Haitian immigrants in Vance's home state of Ohio and suggesting that immigrants were committing crimes and stealing jobs from US citizens.
On Friday, Trump blamed Harris for the rising trend of irregular migration.
"The architect of this destruction is Kamala Harris," Trump said at Trump Tower in Manhattan. "
She keeps talking about how she supposedly wants to fix the border. We would merely ask, Why didn't she do it four years ago? It's a very simple question."
He also accused Harris of turning small towns in the US into "blighted refugee camps".
A wide-ranging border security bill that took months to negotiate was blocked by the US Senate in February, after Trump pressed Republicans to reject any compromise.
Earlier on Friday, Trump met in New York with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy presented his war "victory plan" to Trump during a closed-door meeting after the Republican presidential candidate said he would work with both Ukraine and Russia to end their conflict.
The meeting between the two men at Trump Tower in Manhattan was their first in-person encounter since 2019.
Zelenskiy said he was talking with both Trump and Harris because Ukraine needed strong US support in its continuing war with Russia.
with AP
