Previewing the 2024 Campaign Trail Issues - Border Security

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Border security is a key issue on the 2024 campaign trial. How Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump approach the issue could be a deciding issue for many voters.

The border is front and center in Washington this year, after the country saw record levels of illegal border crossings under the Biden administration.

The Senate attempted to pass border security reforms in May, but the bipartisan bill failed after Trump told Republicans to kill it.

Despite crossings dropping dramatically in recent months, it’s still a major election year talking point for both Harris and Trump.

“We will seal the border, stop the invasion, and launch the largest deportation effort in American history,” said former President Trump during a visit to a section of the border in Arizona last month.

Vice President Harris spoke out about border security during her Democratic National Convention speech in August.

“I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border,” she said.

Trump’s border plans outlined on his campaign website include to end “catch and release” policies, restore Remain in Mexico, eliminate asylum fraud.

The Trump campaign website also said, “In cooperative states, President Trump will deputize the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing illegal alien gang members and criminals.”

The Harris-Walz campaign has promoted bringing back the Senate’s failed bipartisan border security deal, that they say Trump killed.

The campaign said in an e-mail the duo is running to fix the country’s broken immigration system, and has highlighted her former role as a border state prosecutor. The campaign says during her time as prosecutor, she went after transnational gangs that smuggle weapons and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. The campaign also says she supported “some of the toughest reforms to our border in decades” as Vice President.

Mark Morgan, the former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection under the Trump administration says whoever the next president is, he believes they should not be framing border security as a red or blue issue.

“We have to start with, with trying to tamp down the ideological and political driven perceptions of the border. Right, and the lies and the false narratives,” said Morgan.

Morgan, who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, said there needs to be more honest discussions about what is happening at the border and explain why stopping the flow of illegal immigration is important. Morgan also said there should be more deterring factors to stop illegal immigration.

“We should deter individuals from illegally entering rather than managing them after they’ve already hit our border. That’s a very critical piece of that. The deterrence factor. And then for those that continue to ignore those deterrence factors, then there’s got to be, timely and swift consequences for those and continue to violate the law,” he said.

Immigrant advocate groups like Global Refuge agree reforming border security policy is key but so is immigration policy.

“Here is an opportunity for political leaders to put, you know, election season politics aside and to realize that American voters, they want to lose, they want us to figure out how do we have an orderly system where we know who’s coming across our southern border, while we also realize that we are an immigrant nation,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the CEO of Global Refuge.

Vignarajah said border security reform should be balanced with continuing to welcome those who immigrate for family and economic reasons.

“Our view at Global Refuge, is we want safe, secure communities. As a mother myself, that’s what I want for my children. But we also have to ask, at what cost?,” said Vignarajah. “Does border security mean we have to separate migrant children from their parents? Does it, mean we have to round up, detain and deport ten million people. Does it mean we have to build and maintain, and exorbitantly expensive and ineffective, traditional border wall?”

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