JD Vance hammers Harris during whirlwind border visit in Arizona

SIERRA VISTA — During a whirlwind visit to the border wall south of Sierra Vista, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said he'd quickly fix problems "unleashed" at the southern border by Vice President Kamala Harris, if he and running mate Donald Trump are elected in November.

"This is not rocket science. It is not hard to secure the southern border. You just have to re-implement some common-sense policies," Vance told dozens of reporters gathered at the wall for Thursday's press event. "If people can come into this country and they know they’re never going to be deported, you effectively have an open border. That's what Kamala Harris did, and Donald Trump and I promise to do exactly the opposite."

On Thursday morning Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, stood beside the border wall and spoke for about 25 minutes with representatives from the Trump-aligned Border Patrol Union, the Cochise County Sheriff's Department and local ranchers before making a six-minute statement to the press.

"It’s hard to believe until you see it with your eyes just how bad the policies of the Kamala Harris administration have been when it comes to the southern border," he said. "I’ve heard so many stories just in the last half hour of how these guys have failed the American people, and especially failed our children."

Less than a week after Trump named Vance as his pick for vice president on July 15, President Joe Biden announced his decision to exit the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Harris, spurring a shift in Republicans' campaign tactics. 

Standing at a podium set up on the border wall road, backdropped by the green Huachuca Mountains, Vance repeatedly lambasted the "Harris administration" — leaving Biden unnamed — saying they failed to stem the flow of fentanyl into the country and ignored the needs of border agents.

"They send letters, they make phone calls, they are begging the American president and vice president for leadership, and their own 'border czar' ignores them," Vance said, using a colloquial term for Harris' charge to address root causes of migration from Central America. "That is a scandal, that is a disgrace, and to every American watching this, it will stop. But only if you elect Donald J. Trump president in just a few months."

Harris' role in immigration was not focused on managing the southern border, which falls under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In 2021, Biden tasked Harris with tackling the root causes of migration from Mexico and the "Northern Triangle" countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras by working with those governments to improve economic conditions.

Harris could be criticized for her lack of direct engagement in other countries, especially in South America, which have experienced surges in immigration to the U.S. since 2021, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. But she's also had success in developing economic opportunities that target groups likely to migrate, including women, Indigenous people and young working-age people from Guatemala, he said.

"These types of policy efforts take years, and some studies have shown it would take decades of continuous economic development to reduce irregular immigration from Central America," he said.

Vance also emphasized that a Trump administration would re-implement the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their claims make their way through the courts, and would end "catch and release." 

Republicans often use "catch-and-release" to describe releasing migrants from custody after processing with a "notice to appear" in immigration court. But without more funding for the court system and an expansion of detention space, ending the practice would be impractical, Ruiz Soto said.

"You can say you want to end catch-and-release but that means you’d have to have significantly more detention capacity, significantly more immigration judges, more Border Patrol agents and ICE agents," he said. "That is something that even if (Trump) is elected, it would require significant congressional investment to overhaul the infrastructure of the southern border."

Re-instating the "Remain in Mexico" policy isn't easy either, he said. The policy has technically been "paused" by the Biden administration and would face continued litigation if re-started, Ruiz Soto said.

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"These types of efforts are always presented as simple, when they actually require significant, complicated negotiation with Mexico," which would now involve the incoming Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, Ruiz Soto said. "So when someone like (Vance) says it would be simple, it's far from that."

The "Remain in Mexico" policy was also inhumane and left asylum seekers unprotected for months in dangerous conditions south of the border, where they were targeted for kidnapping and extortion, said Alba Jaramillo, co-executive director of the Immigration Law and Justice Network.

Vance's characterization of migrants as inherently dangerous is not only misleading — numerous studies show immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans — but it raises the risk of violence against immigrant communities, Jaramillo said.

"As a formerly undocumented person, as a border community resident and as an advocate for immigrants, I just worry about the safety of our Latino communities and immigrant communities with the hateful rhetoric that (Vance) is using," she said. 

On Thursday Vance referenced his mother's struggles with addiction, detailed in his bestselling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy."

"A lot of you know my story, and I have been a little kid waiting at the bedside of his mother, angry that his mom took something she shouldn’t have taken, but praying to God, 'Please, Jesus, let her wake up,'" he said. "And the unfortunate truth is because of the poison that Kamala Harris has let come into this country, there are a lot of those prayers that won’t be answered."

The fentanyl crisis began a decade ago and has accelerated as Mexican criminal organizations developed global supply chains to manufacture and smuggle fentanyl into the U.S., according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

DHS on Wednesday touted the Biden administration's efforts to tackle the fentanyl epidemic, noting that more than 90% of seized fentanyl is intercepted at official U.S. ports of entry, usually in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens. So far in fiscal year 2024, the Biden administration has boosted non-invasive inspection technology at the ports, arrested 3,600 people connected to fentanyl seizures and seized more than 27,000 pounds of illicit fentanyl, a DHS release said.

Last month U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded its largest fentanyl seizure in agency history at the Lukeville port of entry, where the agency says a 20-year-old U.S. citizen tried to smuggle 4 million fentanyl pills into the U.S.

Vance cited stories shared on Thursday by fourth-generation rancher John Ladd, who said migrants were "chasing his cattle, stealing his equipment, destroying his property and his own government refuses to stop it," Vance said. "John, I’m sorry. As a United States senator, I am ashamed at what this Harris administration has done and I promise it's gonna get better in about six months."

Vance did not bring up the Biden administration's June executive order that has outraged human rights advocates. Migrant arrests outside U.S. ports of entry have plummeted since the Biden administration enacted severe limits on asylum access, which are currently being challenged in court.

"To our disappointment, the Biden administration has created an asylum system that has been harsh and impossible to access for our immigrant community," Jaramillo said.

On Thursday, a group of Arizona border officials who have endorsed Harris for president criticized Vance for his “photo op” at the border wall, and noted that Trump in February encouraged Republican senators to block a bipartisan border-security deal, sponsored by Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., that would have restricted asylum access and bolstered the backlogged U.S. immigration court system.

“For Trump and JD Vance, our homes, and these border communities, are nothing but an opportunity for a photo-op,” San Luis Mayor Nieves Riedel said in a Thursday statement. “We know they don’t care because they never ask us what can be done to help, and they blocked the most important bill to secure the border in decades. But sure enough, they show up ahead of the election to take some pictures.”

Photos: Republican VP candidate Sen. JD Vance visits the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona