Trump Arizona Harris border, Democrats tough on immigration

Former President Donald Trump painted a dark picture Thursday of what the U.S.-Mexico border would look like if Vice President Kamala Harris were elected president.

Trump visited Arizona just hours before Harris was set to accept her party's presidential nomination on the final night of the election. Democratic National Convention.

During the hour-long press conference, Trump falsely claimed that Harris supported open border policies and repeated false data about how many immigrants had entered the United States during the Biden-Harris administration.

Trump claimed: “If (Harris) had the chance, she would allow over 100 million illegal immigrants to enter our country.” “Our country will be ravaged and essentially it will not be a country.”

Trump also described several horrific crimes allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants.

Stirring voters' concerns about undocumented immigrants and the southern border and then promising to respond to those concerns was a key part of Trump's campaign strategy.

Meanwhile, Harris and Democrats are still working to develop a unified immigration and border security platform.

That work was on display this week at the Democratic National Convention, where speakers tried to thread a thread between sympathy for immigrants and tougher border controls that polls show voters support.

“Let’s be clear: The border has been breached,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., said Wednesday night. “This country founded by immigrants is a rare and beautiful thing.”

Suozzi, a freshman in the House, ran for office on a hawkish border platform that helped him flip a Republican-controlled New York House seat blue.

The surge in migrants at the border last year swamped cities across the country. As state governments rushed to find housing outside major cities, local leaders quickly realized they lacked the infrastructure to support newcomers.

At the Chicago convention, Democrats sought to place blame on Trump, accusing him of pressuring Republican allies in Congress earlier this year to veto a Senate border bill that would have allocated more resources to border security.

“Trump vetoed this bill,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, said on Wednesday, a statement Harris echoed during her acceptance speech later in the week.

Murphy, who has been at the forefront of the crumbling border talks, has accused Trump of deliberately sabotaging them because the ongoing immigration crisis suits Trump's political goals.

“Hate and division, that's Trump's oxygen,” Murphy said.

After the Senate border bill failed, Biden said he would use executive power to do some of the things the failed bill could have done.

In June, Biden signed an executive action tightening immigration restrictions that faced fierce opposition from progressive immigration advocacy groups.

Biden's move is intended to send a clear message to voters concerned about border issues: He will not back down and take tough border actions.

This harder line was evident in some speeches at the Democratic National Convention.

“When Donald Trump comes to Texas, he's standing next to a police officer in uniform like me. He's not here to help us,” Texas County Sheriff Javier Salazar said this week Three means. (Harris), on the other hand, has been fighting border crime for years.

“When the traffickers didn't stop, she put them in jail,” he added.

The broader impact of fewer migrants crossing the border due to Biden's executive actions is already being felt on the ground.

For example, earlier this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is sending busloads of immigrants out of his state to redistribute the influx of immigrants.

But by July, the Republican governor was no longer busing any migrants north, according to data obtained by NBC News.