Harris at the Mexican border in an attempt to score points on immigration

Kamala Harris went to the border with Mexico on Friday to try to weaken Donald Trump on his favorite subject, immigration, an initiative that the Republican billionaire tried to stifle by twisting statistics.

The vice-president and Democratic candidate chose Arizona for her first trip of this type since she launched the race for the White House, after the withdrawal of President Joe Biden in July.

In this state in the southwest of the United States which will be hotly contested during the November 5 election, Kamala Harris went to Douglas, a border town, where she met with border police agents along the wall that separates the country from Mexico.

The candidate must call on the spot “to tighten security measures” at the border, according to a manager of her campaign and should promise to strengthen the staff of the police and to deploy more fentanyl detection equipment, a powerful synthetic opiate that is wreaking havoc in the United States.

“Exposing the failure of Donald Trump”

The 59-year-old Democrat, former prosecutor, also intends to “expose Donald Trump’s failure to respond to the challenge (of immigration) when he was president and his recent maneuvers to torpedo solutions supported by both parties”.

The 78-year-old billionaire had lobbied for Republican parliamentarians to block a bill brought by President Joe Biden, which would have significantly toughened American migration policy. He regularly mocks the “incompetence” of Kamala Harris on this subject, recalling that Joe Biden had charged the vice-president with a mission on the roots of immigration at the start of his mandate.

“Kamala Harris should cancel her press conference,” attacked Donald Trump on Friday. At a rally in the key state of Michigan, he twisted official figures to falsely claim that “more than 13,000 murder convicts” who crossed the border under the Biden-Harris administration “were released from prison and wander our streets.

In fact, these recently released government statistics show that 425,000 immigrants with criminal records live in the United States, more than 13,000 of whom have been convicted of murder. The data does not specify how long these individuals have been living in the United States, and experts estimate that many of them have been here since before the Biden administration, if not for decades.

“These are people who have already been charged and convicted and who have served their sentences,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council told AFP. Under the Trump presidency, hundreds of thousands of immigrants with criminal records were already present in American society, he recalled. “The only reason they cannot be deported is due to diplomatic issues with their home country and has nothing to do with U.S. government policy or practices,” he added.

Favorite subject

In Arizona, Kamala Harris also wants, according to her campaign manager, “to reject the false idea that we must choose between securing the border and creating a safe, organized and humane immigration system.”

The arrival of migrants at the border with Mexico is one of Donald Trump’s favorite subjects, in whom Americans trust more than his Democratic opponent to respond to illegal immigration, according to polls.

The billionaire, who recently spread false information about Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats in Ohio, uses particularly violent rhetoric against immigrants. “They are infecting our country,” Donald Trump said Thursday, after having already accused migrants of “poisoning the blood” of America. “Americans have seen their communities destroyed by this sudden and choking deluge of illegal aliens. It’s a tidal wave, an invasion,” he added.

If he is re-elected, the former president, who criticizes Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for having transformed the southern border into a sieve, intends to carry out mass expulsions of illegal immigrants.

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