Border residents speak out against Kamala Harris' record on security: 'Everything is literally open'
Border residents in Texas and Arizona are dissatisfied with the conditions along the southern border under the Biden administration and do not believe conditions will improve if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president.
Texas and Arizona residents spoke with Fox News Digital about their thoughts of Harris as the so-called "border czar."
"Just look at where we are right now," said a Yuma resident, "there's no border security."
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A Sierra Vista, Arizona voter described Harris' record on the southern border as vice president as "Lousy, non-existent, she never did anything other than open them more."
"It's non-existent. So from a scale of 0 to 10, I would give her a zero," said an Arivaca, Arizona resident on Harris' record on the southern border.
"Everything is literally open. People just come across, wait to get picked up and get sent along somewhere in the U.S," said the Yuma resident.
Harris has often been described as the "border czar" for her role in immigration assigned to her by President Biden, although some media outlets sought to dispute the title and argued it's unfair to assign her blame for security problems.
A Del Rio, Texas gun shop owner called out the vice president for doing "nothing" for border security and said she has never been to the border, although in 2021, Harris visited a processing center in El Paso. The Del Rio resident also gave Harris a zero for her handling of immigration and said the border crisis will just "get worse" under a Harris administration.
Migrant crossings at the southern border, which had been increasing in the last months of the Trump administration, skyrocketed after Biden entered office. Biden also rolled back a number of Trump-era initiatives and attempted to place a moratorium on deportations. With numbers rising quickly, Biden told reporters that Harris would be put in charge of tackling "root causes" – issues like climate change, poverty and violence the administration believes was driving migrants north.
"There’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border," he said.
It quickly led to Harris being dubbed by media outlets and Republicans as the "border czar." The White House rejected that title, but it has stuck with her ever since and made her a figurehead along with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for the crisis.
While Texas has been reliably red in presidential elections since 1980, Arizona has become a significant swing state. In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly carried it to become the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1996. It is expected to be hotly contested again in 2024; no Republican has ever won the White House without also winning the state.
There has been a decline in recent months in illegal border crossings, down from record highs late last year, in response to a Biden administration election-year crackdown.
Adam Shaw reported from Arizona, Nikolas Lanum and Elizabeth Heckman reported from Texas.