Vice President Harris is largely conceding that Donald Trump has won the argument about the border. Both Trump and Harris are now pledging to impose some of the most restrictive immigration, asylum and border policies in decades, Axios reports. Some immigration advocates on the left argue that Harris' election-year embrace of harsh rules has weakened her leverage to push for pathways to citizenship for select populations and other pro-immigration policies she supports. Harris has shifted from framing herself as an advocate for the undocumented to touting herself as a former border state prosecutor who will be more effective than Trump on the southern border. If elected, Harris is pledging to curtail who's able to claim asylum, and pursue felony charges for illegal border crossings. She'd continue building a border wall. Harris said in Nevada, "I will protect our nation's sovereignty, secure our border and work to fix our broken system of immigration." Her campaign began airing an ad in which a narrator declares: "We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that's Kamala Harris."
Some Democrats have been frustrated that Harris and the Biden administration embraced restrictions on asylum that resemble Trump policies they once opposed. Andrea Flores, a former Biden White House official who worked on immigration, lamented that Biden tried to get tougher asylum restrictions, but Republicans then started criticizing immigrants who are here legally through programs that allow them to stay in the U.S. temporarily — moving the goalposts again. Flores said, "The fact that [the Biden administration] had to amend their latest asylum restriction after three months shows that this is the wrong approach. We don't have to choose between a functional asylum system and a secure border." Harris backs changes to make the restrictions longer-lasting. Biden and Harris argue their asylum restrictions are better than Trump's previous attempts because of new ways they offer people to enter the U.S. legally to seek protection — through an app and programs that allow certain populations to stay temporarily while they're applying to stay permanently. These programs never guaranteed a pathway to stay in the U.S. permanently. The administration has decided not to extend the temporary protections through these programs for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians — leaving potentially hundreds of thousands of people in legal limbo.
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