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Vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rallied thousands of supporters in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, where she defended her support for harsher immigration and border enforcement policies. Harris compared her record to Donald Trump’s and blamed the Republican presidential nominee for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have further militarized the southern border.
Vice President Kamala Harris: “Our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it. It was all set to pass, but at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down.”
Supporters: “Boo!”
Vice President Kamala Harris: “Right.”
Harris has touted recent endorsements by more than a dozen mayors in Arizona, a border state, including that of Republican John Giles of Mesa, who praised Harris’ backing of the failed bipartisan bill. Immigration advocates say the legislation would have further eroded the rights of asylum seekers.
To be fair, coupled in with this more draconian set of rules was an attempt to actually make the border function normally if you actually read some of the finer details. We have a massive need for more immigration judges which is causing migrants to be in camps longer and leading to more abuse as they and their families wait for rulings. Republicans have made the disfunction part of the process to keep them tortured longer and the new policy would be the first real push in over a decade to fix that. I’d also rather have a hiring wave under a Democrat than a republican. Bush created a nightmare with border patrol by advertising the positions to the public and structuring it as defending America rather than taking care of desperate people and getting them processed.
Yeah, exactly. There was some genuine cruelty in the bill, put in as an attempted compromise with the Republicans so they could get it passed (incl. making it harder to get asylum and easier to kick people out), although nothing even close to the child-stealing horror movie stuff that Trump was getting his kicks out of putting into place. But the majority of the legislation was trying to help – increasing the number of judges so people aren’t waiting in custody for over a year in a terrifyingly racist and overcrowded prison when they didn’t even do anything wrong being a big one.