The first question in Tuesday night’s debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was about the economy, but Trump quickly switched to scapegoating immigrants.
Trump has argued that immigrants are “flooding” the U.S. from prisons and psychiatric hospitals overseas and taking jobs from black and Latino Americans.
Trump has seen immigration as a way to retake the White House and has repeatedly criticized Harris – whom he has called his “border czar” – on the issue, although her official role is not to police borders but to investigate the root causes of migration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Trump returned to the topic multiple times during the televised debate from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia after being asked directly about immigration.
At 6:46 p.m., when asked about the January 6, 2021, riots, Trump avoided talking about his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol and said immigrants who are killing people should be prosecuted.
At 6:52 p.m., when asked why he would not concede that he lost the 2020 election, Trump said he needed a border and a wall to stop migrants from entering the country (something election experts have repeatedly said is rare).
And when the 90-plus minute debate finally came to an end, he returned to immigration in his closing remarks, saying Harris had three and a half years to resolve the border issue. “Why didn’t she do it?” he said.
Immigration has been a tough issue for Harris, with polls showing many Americans see Trump as more effective than Harris at controlling the border. Harris declined to directly answer a question about why the Biden administration waited until six months before the election to take action on the border after migrant arrivals reached record levels.
Border apprehensions have fallen by more than 50% since the Biden administration took office in June. Increased enforcement by Mexican immigration authorities and hot summer temperatures have also contributed to the decline in the number of migrants entering the country.
Instead, Governor Harris voiced her support for “the toughest border control bill in decades” that would add 1,500 additional Border Patrol agents and additional resources to stem the flow of fentanyl and gang trafficking across the border.
President Trump pressured House Republicans this year to reach a bipartisan border security agreement.
“This happened at a time when Americans need leaders who are actually going to get to the solutions, who are actually going to address the problems that are in front of them,” Harris said, “but the former president is someone who would rather run for office with the problems than solve them.”
Asked why he killed the bill, Trump pivoted from a direct answer, saying “our country is being lost” and that immigrants entering the US “will get us into World War III.”
Trump falsely claimed that in Springfield, Ohio, immigrants are “eating dogs. … Eating cats. Eating the pets of people who live there.”
On Tuesday, Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio claimed that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield. Authorities said they had received no credible reports to support the rumor. The rumor, amplified by public figures who have criticized Harris’s record at the border, spread quickly on social media.
Harris responded to Trump’s remarks by laughing and saying, “That’s pretty extreme!”
Trump has vowed to launch “the largest deportation campaign in American history” if re-elected. Asked how he would deport 11 million illegal immigrants, he did not explain. He said violent crime was falling in other countries but was “skyrocketing” in the US because of immigration.
The FBI says violent crime in the U.S. is declining. Studies also show the number of illegal immigrants outnumbers U.S.-born citizens. And there’s no evidence that foreign prisons are being emptied to send criminals to the U.S. – a claim Trump has made repeatedly, even though it has been proven false.
Given the opportunity to counter Trump’s claims about crime, Harris said it was “important that we move forward, drop this old, worn-out rhetoric and address the needs of the American people – helping small businesses, the housing shortage, food prices.”
“Frankly, the American people are tired of this same old, tired strategy,” she said.
