Border-district Republicans hammer Harris, demand 'an apology' over 'photo op' campaign stop in Arizona

Vice President Kamala Harris’ battleground border state visit on Friday is being panned by House Republicans whose districts represent the front lines of the current migrant crisis.

At issue is Harris' campaign stop in Douglas, a border town in the key state of Arizona, that comes less than six weeks before voters head to the polls to pick the next president.

"I have been consistent in my willingness to work with anyone – on either side of the aisle – to address the crisis at the border," Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., told Fox News Digital. "However, Vice President Harris’ visit to the border smells like nothing more than a photo opportunity to try and score political points."

Ciscomani is just one of several GOP lawmakers from border districts who are accusing Harris of caring more about optics than results. They have long blamed the Biden administration for the record number of illegal border crossings since Democrats took office, and Harris’ handling of the border is one of Republicans’ most significant political cudgels against her.

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"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. "As a result, border districts, like mine, have suffered under her lack of leadership."

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Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., whose San Diego-anchored district includes about 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, suggested the border crisis is a "feature, not a flaw" of the administration’s policies.

"What followed? America’s deadliest drug crisis ever, the unprecedented trafficking of women and girls, and 10 million illegals allowed to enter the country and stay," Issa said. "Kamala owes America an apology, not a photo op."

Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital that she believes Harris' trip is purely about playing politics. 

"It’s no coincidence that this last-minute visit comes as polls show Harris struggling in Arizona," she said. "Despite the photo ops, the fact remains [that] under Harris’s watch, we’ve faced an unprecedented border crisis, a stark contrast to the secure border we had under President Trump."

The 2024 election has seen a paradigm shift in how Democrats are discussing the border. Candidates on the left who need to appeal to moderate and independent voters – a contingent that includes Harris – have emphasized the need for border security.

Democrats have also pointed to President Biden’s executive actions on asylum that preceded a drop-off in the number of illegal border crossings between ports of entry in recent months. Encounters at the southwestern border were lower in July than during former President Trump’s final month in office.

On an annual basis, however, Biden’s tenure has seen more illegal crossings – with 2022 seeing a record 2.2 million border encounters.

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Crossings also soared between 2020 and 2021 when Biden took office and rolled back several of Trump’s more restrictive border policies.

But rather than the issue uniting both parties, it has split Democrats and Republicans on how best to approach that goal.

Harris has frequently touted her support for a border security plan that was tanked earlier this year by Republican lawmakers, who said it did not do enough to secure the border and also codified policies they opposed. Democrats accuse the GOP of killing the legislation because it was opposed by former President Trump.

Asked for comment on Republicans’ attacks against Harris visit, a campaign spokesperson pointed Fox News Digital to a senior Harris campaign official’s comments that previewed the vice president’s Friday remarks.

She’s expected to accuse Trump of blocking progress on border security for political gain and advocate for tougher border security measures.

The Harris campaign also pointed Fox News Digital to a statement on her visit that said Harris will "outline her plan to deliver real solutions on border security and the fentanyl crisis – unlike Donald Trump, who did nothing to fix our broken immigration system, made things worse, and killed bipartisan border solutions to play politics."

Harris has not visited the border since 2021, a trip that came shortly after she was tasked with spearheading a solution to the root causes of mass migration, which earned her the informal title of "border czar."

The Trump campaign said in its own statement on Harris’ Friday trip: "Kamala's last-minute trip to the border and empty calls for more security 39 days before the election will not rewrite the past 44 months of chaos, crime, and bloodshed caused by her open border policy."