Kamala Harris gains support on a signature Donald Trump issue: immigration

WASHINGTON — Democrats have chipped away at Donald Trump’s lead on immigration after President Joe Biden tightened the U.S. border this year and Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the ballot, according to several polls, analyses and advocates.

Disorder at the U.S. border with Mexico and a massive influx of migrants, including many without authorization, remain potent issues for Trump and his running mate JD Vance as they campaign in swing states.

Trump has made immigration a key part of his campaign for a second term as president and repeatedly has vowed to close the southwestern border, build walls to keep migrants out and to round up and deport hundreds of thousands of "illegal aliens" from the United States.

Yet several polls show immigration has slipped from being the top issue in the presidential race in the spring and now ranks second or even third behind the economy, including jobs and inflation. Immigration still ranks higher than protecting democracy and abortion.

That change came as the Biden administration this year began to decrease border crossings by persuading Mexico to block migrants on its side of the border and by making it harder for migrants to enter the United States without legal permission to stay and seek asylum.

Those steps have resulted in a drop in Border Patrol arrests from a peak of nearly 250,000 in December to about 58,000 in August, a Pew Research report released Tuesday said. That was the lowest number since the last year of the Trump administration.

Biden on Monday ordered tougher asylum restrictions when migrant crossings between official border crossings hit 2,500 or more in a day. Asylum access now will not be restored until those crossings are below 1,500 a day for nearly a month instead of a week.

Lanae Erickson, a social policy and politics expert at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, said Democrats must back stricter policies and tougher rhetoric on immigration.

"I don't think Democrats need to win on immigration, but it has been such a high-salient issue for voters that they couldn't lose on it as badly as they had been," Erickson told Newsday.

"And so really the task was to neutralize that advantage or erode it to the point where voters could then say, ‘Well, both of these are palatable options on this issue,’ " she said.

New direction

Harris visited the Arizona border with Mexico at the end of September and promised to work with Congress to reform the immigration system to ensure that "it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger."

Ahead of that trip, Trump sought to counter Harris on immigration.

"When Kamala is seen at the Border on Friday, she will pass Hundreds of Miles of Wall that was built by TRUMP, and it is Wall that WORKS!" he wrote in a post on the social media site X.

At the border, Harris said she backs a Senate immigration bill negotiated by a Republican, a Democrat and an independent that would tighten entry standards and deploy more Border Patrol officers, immigration judges, asylum officers and fentanyl inspection machines.

In February, the Senate failed to pass the bill, considered the strongest in decades, after Republicans voted against it at Trump’s urging. Some Republicans said they preferred a House immigration bill that would have restored Trump's restrictions on immigration, border wall construction and the "Remain in Mexico" policy for those seeking asylum. Democrats rejected that bill.

"The ridiculous ‘Border’ Bill is nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election," Trump wrote in February ahead of the vote on his social media site Truth Social. "Don’t fall for it!!!"

Last week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Newsday, "Voters are smart, and now they know it is the former president — not Democrats — who blocked a solution and refused to allow a bill to pass that would have greatly improved the situation."

That bill represents "the Democratic Party’s convergence with Republicans on border security," wrote Muzaffar Chishti and Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank for research and analysis of immigration.

Most Republican members of Congress and conservative critics of federal immigration policies, however, argue that Democrats still offer too many pathways to citizenship and back policies that create massive burdens on U.S. cities.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to restrict the levels of immigration, criticized the policies of the Biden administration and Democrats in testimony before a House subcommittee last month.

He described the Biden-Harris approach to immigration this way: "We get to let in anyone we want, in any number, for any reason, and we dare Congress to do anything about it."

Texas' Republican Gov. Greg Abbott pushed Democrats to deal with the influx of migrants by busing nearly 46,000 of them to New York City, prompting Mayor Eric Adams to criticize Biden and his immigration policies. Long Island nonprofit social service agencies also said they were hard pressed to help the high number of migrants seeking their help.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) helped push Democrats in a new direction by disregarding advice to avoid the issue of immigration and instead embraced it in his successful run in a February special election for the 3rd Congressional District on Long Island and in Queens.

He since has sponsored bills with Republicans to take further steps to both offer pathways for migrants to obtain legal status in the United States while also tightening the border, and Biden has implemented some of his proposals through executive action.

But Suozzi said Harris and other Democrats must talk more about immigration solutions.

"She talked about it at the [Democratic] convention. She talks about it in her stump speeches. She did a commercial on it. She went to the border," he said. "She's got to do it more often."

Measuring change

Some polls show Trump’s dominance on the issue of immigration has lessened.

The Quinnipiac Poll, for example, found that immigration became the No. 1 issue in its national surveys in March, but slipped to third-most important by May.

"Some of the urgency about immigration appears to have waned. It was eclipsed by the economy and preserving democracy," Quinnipiac polling analyst Mary Snow said in an email.

Trump led Biden by 11 percentage points on immigration in a May Quinnipiac Poll, Snow said. Harris narrowed the gap but did not close it — and trails Trump nationally by eight points — but does better in northern swing states.

A Quinnipiac Poll released Sept. 18 found a virtual tie between Trump, at 49%, and Harris, at 48%, in the swing state of Michigan on immigration. In Pennsylvania, Trump led Harris on the issue 50% to 46% and in Wisconsin 52% to 45%, the poll found.

Other pollsters have found little change on immigration since Harris became the Democratic standard-bearer.

A Sept. 19 Siena Poll of likely voters in the very Democratic state of New York found an almost even split among voters on immigration — 48% for Harris and 47% for Trump.

In New York’s suburbs on Long Island and in Westchester County, 53% of those surveyed favored Trump on immigration, and only 43% did for Harris.

"It remains to be seen whether Ms. Harris’ new message on border security will resonate with Americans, who consider immigration one of the most important issues this election," wrote Joe Chatham, director of government relations for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce overall immigration.