Back in 2018, Kamala Harris and other Democrats were tagged as then-President Donald Trump‘s wall is a futile project that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars. Harris even went so far as to post on the Internet that the obstacle “un-American”.
Now, as a presidential candidate, his border security plan includes filling in strategic sections of the wall along nearly 2,000 miles of the southwestern border, given his approval of a failed bipartisan bill that he says is now the cornerstone of border policy.
Some materials to build that wall have been waiting and rusting near the border since 2021. When President Joe Biden took office, he immediately stopped construction of the border wall.
Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, which shares an 83-mile international border with Mexico, brought NBC News to remote areas of the border where construction materials are piled up near the unfinished wall.
“So it’s been sitting here for the last 3 1/2 years and we’re frozen in time in Cochise County when it comes to our border,” Dannels said.
As with the rest of the US-Mexico border, the number of migrants arriving in the county has declined since Biden’s executive action took effect in June. According to sheriff’s office statistics, the average monthly number of inmates in county jails involved in border crimes such as smuggling has dropped 23% since June.
But the Tucson sector of the border, which includes Cochise County, remains the nation’s busiest for illegal crossings, and Dannels said his officers still conduct high-speed car chases of U.S. citizens being paid to smuggle migrants.
On Friday, Harris visited the border, about an hour east of Cochise County. Although Biden became his deputy take over the main causes of immigration In 2021, he visited the border only once during his tenure as vice president.
The Harris campaign is quick to point out that Harris’ approach to the border began with the leadership of law enforcement in California. “As border state attorney general, Vice President Harris prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for arms, drug and human trafficking,” campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg told NBC News in an email. “Americans want leaders like Kamala Harris who solve problems, not politicians like Donald Trump who only want to campaign against them.”
When pressed on immigration policy, Harris vows to revive bipartisan border security. draft law Trump failed to pass Congress in late May after urging his supporters to reject him.
“Vice President Harris believes in tough, smart solutions to secure the border, keep communities safe, and reform our broken immigration system,” Ehrenberg said.
The border bill would provide 1,500 more border workers, improve technology and, according to its text, begin an “immediate resumption” of the ongoing border wall construction in 2021.
“A border wall is something that Vice President Harris supports, but only where it makes sense,” said Arizona state representative Consuelo Hernandez, a Harris supporter whose district covers the southeastern portion of the Arizona-Mexico border.
Hernandez said the wall should not be seen as a panacea, but as part of the border security efforts Harris will implement. “We need a wall and resources,” he said. “That means we have more ICE agents and more Border Patrol. This means ensuring that we have judges who can hear asylum cases more quickly.”
Trump brings up and explains immigration in every campaign speech his mass deportation plan It welcomes more than 10 million migrants and its record of building a wall. Trump has built more than 450 miles of wall, though almost all of it was to replace existing barriers with a new, taller wall.
In 2023, the Biden administration tried to waive environmental laws to continue building a wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The move was met with backlash from some immigrant advocates who said Biden had changed his position. The Biden administration has said that money already allocated for the construction of the wall during the Trump administration is required to be spent. Still, no new wall construction has begun in the Rio Grande Valley or anywhere else in the Biden administration.
“I want to see it end,” said Border Patrol agent Art Del Cueto, who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union that endorses Trump.
Del Cueto says the wall acts as a barrier, and before the wall was built in remote but high-traffic areas like Cochise County, there were some sections where the border was marked with only a few barbed wire fences.
Del Cueto’s union supported the bipartisan border bill that forms the basis of Harris’ border plan.
“I would say to Vice President Harris, he’s been there for 3 1/2 years. “He should have had some purposeful approach or some kind of approach when he came into office.”