This four-part series examines the candidates’ positions and policy proposals in an effort to cut through the noise and highlight where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on critical issues facing Americans in this election. Information is sourced from campaign websites and what the candidates have said on the trail and in interviews.
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, perhaps the biggest source of political ammunition for Donald Trump against Kamala Harris stems from the perceived influx of immigrants coming across the southern U.S. border.
While the vice president has proposed a series of “tough, smart solutions to secure the border” and highlighted that border crossings are actually now at the lowest level in four years, Trump has continued to hammer Harris on this perceived weakness. However, Harris vocally supports reviving bipartisan legislation to boost border spending and security—a bill that Trump and his Republican cronies killed.
“[Trump] prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said during a trip to Arizona in September. Harris used the visit to remind voters of her background as California’s attorney general, emphasizing her efforts to combat crime along the border and her experience prosecuting gangs involved in sex and drug trafficking.
Trump’s campaign website declares his top agenda item will be to “seal the border and stop the migrant invasion.” The 2024 GOP Platform pledges he’ll deport millions of people. The former president, who has been campaigning to build a border wall for nearly a decade, also vows to complete this construction “quickly, effectively, and inexpensively. “If we don’t have a border, we don’t have a country,” according to Trump.
Kamala Harris’ immigration policy
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris said during her visit to the U.S. border in Arizona. While Trump has zeroed in on the border to attack Harris throughout the campaign, the vice president leans on a bipartisan comprehensive approach aimed at securing the border and fixing “our broken immigration system,” according to her campaign website.
Revive the bipartisan immigration bill and sign it into law
The massive $118 billion bill, which also includes funding for a variety of international security and defense programs, earmarks more than $20 billion for U.S. border improvements. These include curbing border crossings, tightening the asylum processing system, and providing resources to tackle the flow of drugs into the country.
Here are some details Daily Kos highlighted in February after Trump and Republicans killed the bill:
New emergency authority to restrict border crossings if daily encounters with migrants exceed a series of limits.
The government must process at least 1,400 asylum applications a day at official ports of entry if emergency authority is triggered.
The border can be closed for up to 270 days in the first year the legislation is in effect, with the number of days declining to 180 in the third year.
Tougher standards for passing the initial asylum interview, meaning that more applicants will be turned back immediately.
A new application process for adults provides an immediate decision without the case ever going to the immigration court system.
Funding for more immigration judges to increase the capacity of immigration courts.
Funding to the U.S. Marshall Service to provide housing for those held on charges of human and drug trafficking crimes while awaiting trial.
FBI funding to identify potential criminals among those seeking entry, including expanded DNA testing.
Enhance and add more border security
Harris spoke with border security leaders during her trip to Arizona and pledged additional support. The bipartisan bill, which she aims to revive as president, would have added 1,500 new agents and invested in technologies to help detect and intercept drugs like fentanyl being brought into the country. During her visit, she also highlighted the “false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe, and humane.”
Make an earned pathway to citizenship
“We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border,” Harris said at the DNC in August. The notion of an “earned pathway to citizenship” is also repeated on her campaign website, but the vice president hasn’t provided details on how that plan might take shape.
Donald Trump’s immigration policy
Immigration is a top issue—if not the issue— in Trump’s political campaigns for nearly a decade. He often emphasizes this topic, which sits atop his campaign website’s agenda items, at his rallies and riles up his supporters with xenophobic and racist rhetoric.
Stop the migrant invasion
Trump has said he will reinstate hardline border policies, including a program requiring migrants to remain in Mexico while their asylum cases are reviewed. He also pledges to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border and use the National Guard to arrest migrants crossing into the country unlawfully. Additionally, his platform states that Republicans want to cut federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities unless local law enforcement cooperates with federal authorities. He also pledges to strengthen ICE and “increase penalties for illegal entry and overstaying visas.”
Reinstate every border policy of his first term
Trump’s platform declares that “Republicans will restore every border policy of the Trump administration and halt all releases of Illegal aliens into the interior.” If this remains true, it would include Trump’s controversial executive orders to separate families and ban travelers from certain countries.
Complete the wall and militarize the U.S. border
Beyond Trump’s ongoing quest to finish the border wallthe former president and Republicans want to “shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement,” according to their 2024 platform. This would include “moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to our own southern border,” along with deploying the U.S. Navy to create a “full fentanyl blockade” surrounding the country.
Carry out mass deportations and deny entry based on politics
Trump intends to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,” according to his campaign website. But beyond just targeting immigrantshe also vows to implement “strict vetting” to “keep foreign Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists out of America.” Trump and Republicans go even further in order to “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again” by pledging to deport “pro-Hamas radicals” too.
End Temporary Protective Status for Haitian immigrants
Trump ended Temporary Protective Status for Haitian immigrants in his first term, but President Joe Biden reinstated it. During the campaign, Trump latched onto the false claim that Haitian immigrants legally in the U.S. under the program were eating household pets in Ohio. He then said in an interview on Oct. 2 that he’d “absolutely” revoke the measure. “You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country,” he said.
