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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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Republicans were quick to call out what they saw as a lack of action on the U.S.-Mexico border by Vice President Kamala Harris, following her endorsement by President Biden to be the Democrat nominee, but at least one immigration group is confident she can take on the GOP's top issue.
The Immigration Hub (TIH), a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, told Newsweek that Harris' work as attorney general and then senator from California — in which her office tackled international criminal gangs while also making legal immigration pathways easier — meant she could counter Donald Trump's policies.
The GOP has spent much of the Biden administration attacking Harris' record on migration, pushing the idea that she was the "Border Czar" and arguing that she has not done enough to stop the flow of migrants arriving at the southwest border.
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"I think I will need to triple the border wall, razor wire barriers and National Guard on the border," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in reaction to Biden's endorsement of Harris on Sunday.
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TIH said that Harris had been working to combat the root causes that are pushing people to the southwest border.
"You know, the numbers at the border are actually pretty low right now," Kerri Talbott, the group's executive director told Newsweek Monday.
"People are broadly supportive of these efforts to reunite people their families," Talbott added, referencing Harris' support for DACA and other protections for migrants.
"So we find that whenever we look into the public opinion on it, that the more you talk about it, the more comfortable people feel good with her, because she knows the issue so well, it's easier for her to talk about she just has a real deep experience with it."
The message from the GOP has been that the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee doesn't have the chops to take on illegal immigration.
At the Republican National Convention last week, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said the VP had not fixed anything.
"Kamala had one job. One job. And that was to fix the border," Haley said. "Now imagine her in charge of the entire country."
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Trump's campaign chief told reporters that the operation's best line of attack against Harris was the "border czar" line.
When asked about the criticism by Republicans that Harris had not fixed the border crisis, Talbott said she disagreed.
"Republicans are always talking about her being the borders czar, but she was not the borders czar, and she didn't actually have a platform to do that kind of border security or talk about it as much," Talbott told Newsweek. "And I think now, with her becoming the nominee, she can really use all of her experience and talk about all that she's done from a bigger platform."
In 2023, the White House said that Harris had been tasked with addressing the root causes of immigration, with the U.S. government supporting the creation of 90,000 jobs in Central America while also offering $179 million in financing for small businesses there.
The idea was to keep people in Central America by offering financial stability, in countries including El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Still, encounters at the border rose sharply despite those financial incentives.
Talbott said that Harris also worked to combat the criminals Republicans and Trump claim are pouring over the border.
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"As a prosecutor she worked a lot on the transnational criminal organizations and looking at smuggling and sort of more of the criminal focus," Talbott said.
"Then when she came into the Senate, she really had a deep focus on all the aspects of immigration, because she was on the relevant committees, and she had a ton of oversight of the Trump administration."
Harris sat on the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees and challenged Trump's policy which separated migrant families during his first term.
Part of her work once she was VP included efforts to tackle migrant smuggler operations.
As of June 11, 2024, the scheme, called Joint Task Force Alpha, had seen over 300 domestic and international arrests, while several gang leaders and kingpins extradited by U.S. authorities.
Talbott said that while crossing numbers and crimes committed by migrants make headlines, those TIH had polled understood immigration was a complicated issue and many wanted to see legal pathways made easier.
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