Vice President Kamala Harris will head to Douglas, Arizona, on Friday, marking the first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border for the Democratic presidential nominee since she launched her campaign in July.

While in Douglas, which has a border crossing with Mexico at Agua Prieta, Harris is expected to speak about border security and her support for the bipartisan border bill that was proposed earlier this year by Congress but later killed at the urging of former President Donald Trump. That bill proposed new technology as well as funding for more border agents.

Harris has long been critical of Trump and his meddling with the bipartisan border bill. In an interview with Spectrum News in February, she slammed the former president for putting politics over the security of the country.

“We have been working around the clock with a bipartisan group of senators to fix the problem [at the border],” Harris said then. “We have requested $14 billion to send to the border to fix what's broken there. But there are some people who are intent on standing in the way of solutions because they want the political chit. They want to play the political card on the problem instead of fixing it.

“Real leaders should be about solutions, not about fanning a problem for the sake of their own political survival,” she added.

Trump and his Republican allies have consistently and misleadingly called Harris “the border czar,” charging her with failure to keep the border secure. But Harris was never in charge of border security. Her role in the administration, according to White House staff, was limited to trying to address the root causes of migration in certain Central American countries.

During her trip, Harris is also expected to highlight her work as a former attorney general in California that took on international gangs and criminal organizations, according to a campaign official granted anonymity to speak about the trip as it is still being planned. 

“She has long believed we need an immigration system that is secure, fair, orderly and humane, a stark contrast from the divisive and dangerous politics of Donald Trump,” the official said.

Harris will also likely tout that under the Biden-Harris administration, border crossings are now at lower levels than when Trump left office in January 2021. Following an executive order signed by Biden this summer, Customs and Border Protection has reported that encounters between ports of entry have decreased by more than 50%.