Vice President Kamala Harris will be visiting the southern border Friday for the first time as the Democrats' presidential nominee to bolster her credentials on immigration, Axios reported.
Harris has been trying to shed the title of "border czar" under President Joe Biden as the nation's immigration crisis has reached record levels the past three-plus years. Harris, who has been attempting to position herself as a "border state prosecutor" in campaign ads, will visit Douglas, Arizona, across from Agua Prieta, Mexico.
According to a Harris campaign aide, Harris will push "the toughest bipartisan border security plan in a generation," NBC News reported Wednesday.
Former President Donald Trump, who handed the Biden-Harris administration a secure border in January 2021, said Harris is visiting the border for "political reasons."
"When Kamala speaks about the border, her credibility is less than zero," Trump told a rally Wednesday in Mint Hill, North Carolina. "I hope you're going to remember that on Friday. When she tells you about the border, ask her just one simple question: 'Why didn't you do it four years ago?'"
Among those invited to join Harris in Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic, is Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who told Newsmax last month that the border policies of the Biden-Harris administration have resulted in "a huge decline in public safety quality of life" in his county.
"It has been a huge impact," Daniels said Aug. 8. "We've seen anything from murder all the way down to simple misdemeanors, but it's impacted my office 40 to 44% of border-related crimes that we're dealing with now that we normally would deal with 5 to 10%."
It's unknown if Dannels will join Harris.
Trump has a 21-point lead over Harris on the issue of "securing the border and controlling immigration," according to an NBC News poll from earlier this week.
Trump leads Harris by 1.8 points in Arizona, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Trump lost Arizona to Biden by just 10,457 votes in 2020.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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