Kari Lake tears Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego at the border

U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake downplayed Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to the Arizona-Mexico border on Saturday, saying she spent only 20 minutes at a top source of crime and economic difficulties on a national scale.

A day after Harris received national coverage of the plans she laid out in Douglas to address border security and immigration reforms, Lake sought to use the opportunity to return to the central theme of her own campaign.

Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona Senate, rejected all aspects of Harris’ proposals, which included the bipartisan border security bill negotiated in part by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and reiterated the need to complete the border wall favored by the former Arizona senator. President Donald Trump.

“She came to town to stand by the border that she tore up and look at her feet, hopefully with embarrassment,” Lake said at a news conference in Phoenix.

“I hope she had some shame for what she did not only to Arizona but to this whole great country. Kamala Harris has been an abject failure when it comes to the border.

Lake also threw broadsides at his opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., saying “he doesn’t believe in securing our border and neither does Kamala Harris.”

Hannah Goss, a spokeswoman for Gallego’s campaign, called Lake “a power-hungry liar who will do anything to get power.”

“When a bipartisan deal was on the table to resolve the border crisis, she opposed it, ignoring the wishes of Border Patrol agents who supported the bill,” Goss said. “Meanwhile, Ruben Gallego is a Marine veteran whose number one priority is securing our border and keeping Arizonians safe. That’s why he’s fighting tirelessly to hire more Border Patrol agents, fix our broken asylum system, crack down on fentanyl trafficking, and invest in proven technology – all to increase the security of our borders.

Lake went on to argue that job gains in the Biden administration have not benefited Americans.

“Every job loss under these two buffoons has been a loss for American-born citizens,” Lake said. “And under these two buffoons, all the jobs gained have gone to foreign-born citizens. »

Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that foreign-born workers in the United States gained about 6 million jobs during Biden’s term, about the same number as workers born in the country during this period.

The pandemic complicates like-for-like comparisons for Trump, but at the peak of job growth for different groups before the national quarantine, foreign-born workers increased by about 2 million and native-born workers of 7 million.

Lake blamed the rise in illegal immigration under the Biden administration on violent crime.

To highlight the issues as she sees them, Lake cited figures provided to Congress this week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE said 13,099 immigrants had been convicted of homicides in the United States or abroad; 15,811 were convicted rapists and more than 425,000 were convicted criminals in one way or another.

Asked if she could estimate the number of homicides involving illegal immigrants that occurred in the Phoenix metro area or Arizona, Lake said the crime numbers reported by the FBI are unreliable.

“These FBI crime statistics, which in some way would show that some crime might be going down, many – many, the majority of major cities – have just stopped reporting their crime statistics to the FBI, so Now the FBI crime statistics mean nothing.”

Harris’ visit Friday to Douglas addressed one of the biggest lines of attack Trump and his Republican allies have used against her.

They derisively call her a “border czar,” using a term the media has used to describe a Biden mission to Harris to determine the “root causes” of migration largely from America. central.

During her Friday visit, Harris reiterated her support for measures such as the border security bill, which died without a vote when Trump persuaded congressional Republicans to oppose the bill to avoid to give Biden an election-year legislative triumph. Harris said Trump showed no leadership or interest in solving the problem by letting this bill fail.

But she also went beyond that, saying she would effectively extend Biden’s June executive order limiting asylum applications and she called for immigration reforms, such as providing a pathway access to citizenship for people brought to America as minors.

For his part, Gallego said he also supports passage of the border security bill and has reframed his rhetoric on conditions along the border since entering the Senate race in early 2023.

He now describes the situation as a “crisis”. In a July 2023 interview with Washington Monthly, Gallego downplayed problems in border communities.

“It’s not because one part of this country has a problem that we call this region a mess,” he said at the time.

The border has long seemed a touchstone for Democrats, a place where the party divides on policy and where results are out of step with general public opinion.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center released new survey data Friday that found 96% of Trump supporters and 80% of Harris supporters want increased border security.

Nearly 90% of Trump supporters support the type of mass deportations of illegal immigrants that Trump is promising in a second term, as do 27% of Harris supporters.

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Kari Lake tears Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego at the border

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