Harris, Democrats walk delicate — and harder — line on immigration

CHICAGO – When Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last week at her party’s convention in Chicago, she sought to strike a delicate balance on the issue of immigration, promising to approach enforcement and security at the nation’s southern border as the prosecutor she once was, without abandoning the country’s values.

“I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system,” she said Thursday night. “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”

It was the kind of equilibrium on the issue that Democrats had striven for all week – a leveling between calls for more officers and judges at the country’s southern border and a system that treats people humanely, between promises to uphold the law and rebukes of the fearmongering over “the other” that has permeated the national immigration debate.

But the overall message on immigration from the Democratic Party in the past week, as it has been since Harris announced her candidacy last month, has been decidedly more hard line than it has been in decades. The shift reflects just how much of a political vulnerability the issue remains for Harris and down-ballot Democratic candidates in November, as many voters have come to see the challenges at the southern border as a top concern, and a small but growing minority of Republicans and independents want to curb pathways into the country.

The most common refrain from the stage in Chicago was a denunciation of former President Donald Trump and Republicans for tanking a bipartisan border security deal this year that, as former President Barack Obama said Tuesday, was “written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.”

There were little to no condemnations of Trump’s immigration policies or pledges to reverse them. There were vague calls to expand legal pathways to citizenship but no mention of the roughly 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally who would stand to benefit from the move, many of whom have been working and building families in the United States for years. The immigrants known as Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children and who have become leaders in a national push for legal status, were absent from the podium.

When Democrats were not seeking to neutralize the issue with remarks leaning into border security, they were downplaying it. The party relegated immigration toward the bottom of its platform’s priorities. Few panels, held by national Democrats or associated groups, centered on the issue. One of the most anticipated – billed as a discussion about the future of comprehensive immigration reform – drew fewer than two dozen attendees scattered in a drab ballroom across rows of empty chairs.

Andrea Flores, a former Biden administration official turned critic of its immigration policies who moderated the session, said she had found it hard to tell the difference between Trump and Democrats on border policy. She cautioned that the lack of contrast was allowing Trump to exploit voter dissatisfaction.

“You see support growing for mass deportations, you see support growing for ending asylum, you see support growing for his policies,” she said.

Last month, Republicans made the border and immigration central to their national convention, with a line of speakers accusing migrants of taking jobs and stealing votes, and red-white-and-blue placards emblazoned with “Mass deportation now!” Before Harris took the lectern Thursday, Trump stood at the border fence in Cochise County, Arizona, and falsely argued that she and fellow Democrats had “unleashed a plague of migrant crime.”

Harris has yet to release her full immigration platform, though she is expected do so in the coming weeks. Her approach so far has sought to echo that of President Joe Biden, who in recent months – as the bipartisan deal in Congress fell apart – took a tougher line at the southern border while promising to open pathways to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants long in the United States without legal permission. In June, he signed one executive order denying most migrants the ability to gain asylum and another expanding legal protections for immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens but who are in the country illegally.

Onstage on Thursday, as she has in her campaign rallies, Harris pledged to sign the bipartisan bill. It would have expanded detentions, prohibited most migrants from gaining asylum when the number of crossings soared, provided funding for thousands of new Border Patrol agents and personnel, and invested in new technology to catch drug smugglers.

In an interview, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said his party’s support of the border security bill was “a significant shift on border security, on asylum, on the treatment of those who cross our border.”

“It’s important that the Democratic Party continues to stand clearly on we’re willing to do this,” Coons said.

Some Democrats and pollsters believe the stricter stance will help Harris in critical swing states like Arizona and Michigan, where immigration has been front and center for many independent voters.

“She is a border state prosecutor, and I think Democrats will be wise to remind voters of that,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic advocacy group.

Other Democratic candidates have been assuming tough positions as they run in closely watched House and Senate races across the country.

Michelle Vallejo, a Democrat running for a House seat in South Texas, drew criticism from progressives and immigrant rights groups for releasing an ad promising to support increases in border patrol officers and describing her region as “overwhelmed by the chaos at the border.”

Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York gave Democrats fresh hope that they could neutralize the issue of immigration after he flipped his seat from Republicans this year, despite their attempts to paint him as far left on the issue. In his race, Suozzi had called for temporarily shutting down the border and deporting migrants who assault police. In a notable speaking slot in Chicago, he reserved his sharpest words for Republicans.

“To be a nation of immigrants is hard sometimes, too – you have to work for it,” Suozzi said, adding, “We reject the divisiveness. We reject the dysfunction.”

Four years ago, in 2020, Democrats largely skirted talking about policy proposals and instead focused their messaging on rolling back Trump-era policies. At the time, more Americans were taking more permissive views toward the issue, as they grappled to digest some of the Trump administration’s most extreme actions, including a travel ban from certain Muslim-majority nations and the separations of thousands of families at the United States’ southern border.

Now, some Democrats worry that their party’s response is not substantive enough, and that it remains too focused on the 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States.

Walking into the arena in Chicago last week, Alejandra Gomez, the executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona, a Latino voter mobilization group, said she wanted to hear more about helping laborers and immigrants living in the country illegally who had long been working and paying taxes.

“If we don’t define the message,” she said, “Republicans will define it for us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.