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Vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rallied thousands of supporters in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, where she defended her support for harsher immigration and border enforcement policies. Harris compared her record to Donald Trump’s and blamed the Republican presidential nominee for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have further militarized the southern border.
Vice President Kamala Harris: “Our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it. It was all set to pass, but at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down.”
Supporters: “Boo!”
Vice President Kamala Harris: “Right.”
Harris has touted recent endorsements by more than a dozen mayors in Arizona, a border state, including that of Republican John Giles of Mesa, who praised Harris’ backing of the failed bipartisan bill. Immigration advocates say the legislation would have further eroded the rights of asylum seekers.
If “tough” means “focused”, I’m fairly indifferent. Indiscriminately breaking up families and harrassing people because you’re bigoted is not “tough”, it’s just hateful. It serves no real world functional purpose. And that’s the policies of the right. They aren’t tough, because they aren’t results orientated, beyond punishing “them”. I have to assume (hope) Harris is motivated more by real world cost benefit calculations and less by knee jerk stereotypes. Tough could mean fair, if she intends to apply the rules more justly, and less punativatively. If tough means more scrutiny with less prejudice, it sounds more like a better return on investment for border infrastructure.