Harris finds herself in a difficult position trying to save face in a battleground state on an issue that she has little to show for with just five weeks until the election.

Immigration has skyrocketed in recent weeks to become the most-searched election-related topic on Google. Immigration and the border are significant issues that Harris cannot escape and now will attempt to address head-on when she sets foot in a remote border town called Douglas.

“The American people deserve a President who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say Friday while speaking at a small venue roughly 2 miles from the border, according to remarks shared with the Washington Examiner ahead of Friday.

Whether the effort is too little, too late, a welcome gesture, or simply fails to set her apart has yet to be seen. Local residents from Douglas, Cochise County, and neighboring congressional districts shared mixed feelings in messages with the Washington Examiner Thursday.

Trump spoke at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon and said there was nothing Harris could say that would make up for her lack of presence on the border since 2021.

“Kamala Harris will be visiting the southern border that she has completely destroyed, from what I understand, tomorrow,” Trump told reporters. “Why would she go to the border now, playing right into the hand of her opponent? I mean, you take a look at this — why would you do that? There can be no justification for what she’s done.”

Harris hits the border

Douglas, a border town of roughly 15,000 residents, is located 125 miles from Tucson, Arizona.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Douglas was an epicenter for illegal immigration and where most Border Patrol agents coming out of the academy were sent. Now it’s where migrants seeking to evade the Border Patrol cross, oftentimes in camouflage outfits and carpet-coated shoes so as not to be tracked in the sand or be seen on cameras.

Douglas is located in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, home to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ). It is one of the few towns in the red-leaning Cochise County that is governed by a Democratic mayor.

The Arizona-Mexico border stretches 370 miles and Douglas falls to the eastern half.

On the western end, 90 miles of border wall and almost 40 miles more of a parallel backup wall in the Yuma Border Patrol region, which spans from the Imperial Dunes in southeastern California to Arizona’s Pima County line, were installed before former President Donald Trump left office.

Other parts of Arizona have shorter fencing that is falling apart, while the desert dunes have a floating 16-foot fence.

But border wall projects throughout the state were canceled when the Biden-Harris administration rolled into Washington, leaving literal gaps between fencing projects and allowing illegal immigrants to continue walking into the United States from Mexico despite the huge additions of barrier.

Locals react

Douglas is an interesting stop for a presidential candidate, even a vice president, because although it has been affected by the 10 million migrants who federal officials have encountered nationwide under the Biden-Harris administration, it is not the site of out-of-control migration that Republicans might choose to visit if this was their event.

Nevertheless, first-term Mexican American Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), who represents the 6th District a few miles from Douglas, said Harris’s arrival Friday “smells like nothing more than a photo opportunity to try and score political points” by going to the border, months and years after the worst of the crisis has passed.

Not far from Douglas is Nogales, another border town that last year was the No. 1 spot in the country for fentanyl seizures at the port of entry in 2023. But Harris will not stop there.

“For three and a half years, the Vice President has been in a position to address this crisis but instead she has ignored it,” Ciscomani said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “If she was truly serious about addressing the crisis at the border, she would have done something as the sitting Vice President to help border communities that have been calling for help.”

Ciscomani said the region had become less safe than it was before 2021 with human smugglers, drug cartels, and criminal rings increasingly present in the area.

Mayor Clea McCaa of nearby Sierra Vista shared with the Washington Examiner during an interview in southern Arizona in 2023 that “load drivers,” or people paid to transport illegal immigrants or illegal drugs from the border further into the country, were getting caught frequently speeding through town despite being several towns north of the international border.

Nogales Mayor Donald Huish is not planning to endorse Harris during her visit Friday and said he prefers not to endorse anyone because he represents a diverse community. Huish, a Democrat, said he has seen a “general excitement” among residents ahead of Harris’s visit.

“Personally, I view her visit as a positive and I hope she leaves with additional information that will assist her in her development of what her border policy may be,” said Huish.

Huish had a short list of points that he hoped to get the chance to share with Harris about what he believes his community has needed to deal with the past immigration surge and a future one. The city is slated to receive more than $400 million in federal money to build a new commercial port of entry and modernize the existing border crossing starting next year.

“I hope to convey the positive impact this project will have on our community, region, and State,” Huish wrote in a text message. “I also hope to convey the need for infrastructure if the current border policies continue. I hope to express the challenges we experienced during the surges and how a plan is needed to be able to handle this should the current policy continue. And the need for overall immigration reform.”

Kirsten Engel, a Democrat challenging Ciscomani in November, went further than Huish and echoed a familiar Harris talking point that pokes Republicans for not supporting a bipartisan Senate border package last winter that Democrats have said in recent months would have bolstered the level of federal police at the border, among other things.

“When there was a bipartisan border deal that was supported by the Border Patrol Union that would have made real progress on these exact issues, Juan Ciscomani was against the bill because he’d rather play politics than fix the problem,” Engel said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

CNN anchor Abby Phillip stated during her show this week that the Harris campaign is “hoping to change the narrative that she’s soft on immigration” after coming to terms with the fact that Harris could not continue to “float above” the topic.

Immigration’s strong hold

Immigration has soared to the most-searched election-related topic since Sept. 1, surpassing crime, economy, healthcare, abortion, social security, economy, unemployment, voter registration, race, and inflation.

In July and August, immigration had fluctuated as a midrange issue among the top 10 issues.

But its surge over the past several weeks to the top Google search item has come as former President Donald Trump and running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), began claiming without proof that Haitian immigrants residing in Springfield, Ohio, were slaughtering and consuming neighborhood animals and household pets.

In July, Trump announced Vance as his running mate. Days before the announcement, Vance addressed the National Conservatism Conference, where he spoke about a town that had been “overwhelmed” by Haitian immigrants. That town was Springfield.

It is not clear where the rumors about animal abductions originated. Vance began in early September to post statements on social media claiming that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Trump did not mention Springfield until during his debate against Harris on ABC News Sept. 10. 

Harris vs. Trump

Immigration topped voter concerns in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year and continues to be a major issue in the general election. The number of border crossings has dropped precipitously in recent months, down from a record high in December, but the GOP still believes it can win the election by tying Harris to the spike.

Trump has made a name for himself as the border security candidate since launching his first run for president in June 2015. At the time of his campaign announcement, Trump infamously threatened the Mexican cartels and, during this cycle, has highlighted instances of migrant crime to campaign on the issue.

Harris’s campaign has walked back her previous opposition to the border wall and suggested this summer that she would support some funding for it despite Biden’s canceling congressionally funded contracts upon taking office in 2021.

However, an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire that Harris filled out in 2019 recently resurfaced and showed her earlier support for reducing immigrant detention by 50%, stopping federal immigration authorities from working with local police, and providing transgender care for illegal immigrants in detention.

Harris’s spokesman maintained in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that while her views may have changed, the questionnaire was “not what she is proposing or running on.”

Yet Harris did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment last week on whether she would stand by or even broaden Biden’s paramount immigration orders, including halting deportations, cutting wall construction, ending the “Remain in Mexico” program, and more.

The border crisis

In the 44 months since Biden assumed office, his administration has processed an unprecedented number of immigrants through irregular means, including a program that gives them temporary protected status.

But whether voters want to hear her explanation for her job performance the past 44 months remains to be known. Biden had tapped Harris in early 2021 to address — read: stop — illegal immigration from Central America.

Although Harris has thrown $5 billion in private sector investments at the effort, Central Americans remain the most common migrants encountered at the southern border.

A Border Patrol agent in management who worked in Arizona during the Biden-Harris administration said on Thursday that Harris could not be taken seriously just because she was making a last-minute play on the border to appeal to voters.

“She should remain as quiet on immigration as she was for the last three years and nearly ten months,” said the agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “She is not liked amongst the agents I’ve spoken with, but I’m sure there will be upper management with her trying to make a name for themselves, just in case she wins.”

Kari Lake, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, said Harris’s agenda — or the little she has shared of it — stands at odds with the GOP proposal.

“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego have made Arizona less safe by allowing millions of illegal immigrants to come into our country unchecked,” Lake said in a statement. “I’m running for U.S. Senate to help President Trump finish the wall, secure our border and make our communities safe again.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

A preview of Harris’s Friday remarks shared with the Washington Examiner in advance of the speech indicate that she will go over her list of border-related accomplishments from her time as a California politician, a list that she recited at the Democratic National Convention.

Since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in a closed-door vote earlier this summer, she has stuck to the same talking points about her willingness to support a bipartisan Senate border package that she played no part in helping write. She has continued to lambast Trump for telling Republicans not to support the bill, but she refuses to go on the record about her immigration agenda and what a Harris White House would do on immigration and the border.