Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday told an audience of Hispanic leaders that it’s possible to both secure the border and provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Why it matters: Immigrant advocates hope Harris’ newly-hawkish border policy, which they see as MAGA-leaning, is a temporary shift, Axios’ Alex Thompson writes.
- Some leaders in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus were critical of the Biden administration earlier this year when it pushed through a bill that would limit asylum.
- The bill was blocked on the Senate floor but Harris has pledged to sign the bill if she wins and it passes in Congress.
Zoom in: During her speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, Harris zeroed in on the administration’s work expanding health care access to participants of the the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects some immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.
- She said the U.S. can “create an earned path to citizenship” and secure the border.
- “We can do both and we must do both,” Harris said.
- “As we fight to move our nation forward to a bright future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward. We all remember what they did to tear families apart and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation…”
Zoom out: Latinos are a crucial and growing electorate that can swing the Nov. 5 election, especially in states like Arizona and Nevada.
- As former attorney general of California, Harris has a history of engaging Latinos. She’s gained significant support among Latino voters since becoming the Democratic nominee but needs more to win in November.
- Recent polling shows she hasn’t won over enough Latino voters in Nevada and Arizona to win those states.
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