At a solo campaign event in rural Georgia, Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance blamed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for “opening up the Southern border and letting all these drug cartels bring all the drugs and crime into our communities.”
Saying former President Donald Trump is the law-and-order candidate, Vance claimed Harris wants to defund the police and allow “soft-on-crime prosecutors” to go after law enforcement.
“We’ve got a screwed-up vice president calling the shots, and I think it’s time to fire Kamala Harris, not to give her a promotion,” Vance said at a lively event where he was flanked by law enforcement personnel and vehicles and frequently drew cheers. “I happen to believe in a commonsense principle: back the blue and bring public safety back to Georgia and back to our country.”
While the number of illegal border crossings has surged in recent years, those totals have taken a steep drop in recent months in the wake of executive action from President Joe Biden in June to limit asylum claims when the U.S.-Mexico border gets overwhelmed. The number of illegal crossings fell to a four-year low last month; Border Patrol reported 56,408 encounters between ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border in July, the lowest montly total since September 2020. It also represents a 32% drop from the month prior.
Republicans have used a false line of attack to try and blame Harris for the Biden administration's actions at the border, charging that President Joe Biden made the vice president the "border czar" in charge of security at the U.S.-Mexico border. In March 2021, Biden assigned Harris with leading the administration’s efforts to address the root causes of what propels people in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to attempt to migrate to the U.S. Border security is the responsibility of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The White House has never used the term “border czar” to describe Harris’ role.
Vance's visit to Georgia was the latest in terms of Republican counterprogramming of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. Trump was set to visit the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Thursday as they attempt to tie Harris to immigration issues, while Democrats at the convention have blamed the Republican ex-president for killing a bipartisan-brokered Senate border deal earlier this year.
Trump, Vance said, will properly fund law enforcement with higher pay and the equipment they need, and stop “soft-on-crime prosecutors and police being the bad guy.”
Before his speech, Vance said sheriffs in the small town of Valdosta, Ga., 1,200 miles from the Mexican border, had showed him boxes of children’s candies laced with drugs that had come into the country through the southern border.
“Every town is a border town, and every state is a border state because of the policies of Kamala Harris,” he said. “Think about how sick you would have to be to manufacture drugs that look like children’s candy and think about how sick Kamala Harris has to be to let those people do business in our country instead of throwing them the hell out of our country.”
Similar to a speech Trump delivered earlier this week, Vance said, “Our message to everybody who wants to come to this country is come through the right channels.”
Spectrum News' Ryan Chatelain contributed to this report.