An Arizona sheriff this week slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for ignoring the border crisis, as Republican nominee Donald Trump prepares to visit the state’s border with Mexico on Thursday.
"It’s very important that [Harris] comes here. Because for three-and-a-half years, we haven't seen prioritization, acknowledgment or engagement with Vice President Harris or President Biden," Cochise County sheriff Mark Dannels, who is hosting Trump on Thursday, told the Arizona Republic. "For her not to come in the next 78 days … sends a very strong message."
The remark comes amid growing scrutiny over Harris’s dismal policy record, particularly her failure as "border czar" to secure the southern border, as she is set to formally accept her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday. More than 8 million migrants entered the United States illegally under the Biden-Harris administration, with over 1.7 million "gotaways" now residing in the country without any vetting by immigration officials.
Dannels and the mayor of Sierra Vista, a city near the border, recently invited Harris to visit Cochise County, a rural county on the southern border that is often at the heart of Arizona’s immigration challenges. The Arizona Republic did not report a response from the Harris campaign. Harris, since becoming Biden's point person on the border crisis, has only made one trip to the border, traveling in 2021 to El Paso, a Texan city about 800 miles away from the border. She did not meet with the Border Patrol chief at the time.
Trump, meanwhile, is visiting Cochise County Thursday for a border tour and press conference as his counter-programming to Harris’s official nomination at the DNC.
"It sends a real strong message," Dannels said of Trump’s trip. "You look at his report card when he was president. [The border crisis] was a priority for him."
Pressed by NBC host Lester Holt in 2021 on why she had not visited the border, Harris responded, "And I haven’t been to Europe. I don't understand the point you're making."
"It's hard to believe until you see it with your own eyes, just how bad the policies of the Kamala Harris administration have been when it comes to the southern border," said Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), who visited Cochise County earlier this month.
Arizona Republican Party chair Gina Swoboda echoed the sentiment, saying that the Democratic nominee "has done nothing to enforce the border" and "[does] not protect our law enforcement."