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Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris’ immigration policies are “killing” Black and Hispanic heritage as the candidates continue to spar over how to address one of voters’ top issues in the presidential race.
The former president posted his attack in a statement to Truth Social Monday afternoon, saying that “illegal migrants who are pouring into our country” are “taking the jobs away from Black and Hispanic people who have held them for years.”
“KAMALA IS KILLING BLACK AND HISPANIC HERITAGE, SHE IS KILLING THEIR LEGACY AND THEIR RIGHTS,” Trump wrote in all caps. “REGISTER AND VOTE FOR YOUR ALL TIME FAVORITE PRESIDENT, ME.”
Trump has repeatedly tied Harris to the Biden administration’s handling of migration at the southern border, a difficult issue for Democrats after crossings spiked earlier this year. However, last month U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported the lowest number of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in four years, partly because of President Joe Biden’s asylum ban, an executive order signed in June.
Newsweek reached out via email to Harris’ campaign for comment on Monday.
The former president has repeatedly said that migrants entering the U.S. are stealing jobs from American citizens, a claim that Republicans have long pushed but that experts and immigration activists refute. Studies have also shown that higher rates of immigration do not translate into higher crime rates in the U.S., as Trump has repeatedly said.
Harris, in return, has bashed Trump for helping to sink a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year, which would have added 1,500 CBP officers and 4,300 asylum officers to help along the southern border. The vice president has vowed to bring the bill back to Congress and sign it into law if she is elected.
The immigration issue is at the forefront of voters’ minds ahead of Election Day, and polling has shown that most Americans trust Trump’s policies over Harris’ plans when it comes to addressing their concerns about the border. In a YouGov poll conducted last week after the candidates’ debate, 42 percent of respondents said that they believed Trump would handle immigration “very well,” while only 22 percent said the same for Harris.
At the same time, Harris has maintained a lead over Trump in national polls for weeks, and most viewers have said that they believe the vice president outperformed her Republican opponent in last Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia. As of Monday, The New York Times’ polling average found Harris ahead by 2 percentage points nationwide (49 percent to Trump’s 47 percent).
RealClearPolling gives Harris a similar lead as of Monday, with the vice president ahead by 1.7 points on average (49 percent to 47.3 percent). Polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate has Harris up on average by 2.6 points (48 percent to 45.4 percent).
The vice president has also made gains among Black and Hispanic voters after those key groups were seen tilting toward Trump earlier this year. In an Equis Research poll released August 15, Harris was up by 19 points (56 percent to 37 percent) among registered Hispanic and Latino voters in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In comparison, the same poll found Biden ahead of Trump by just 5 points between May 16 and June 6, when the president was still running.
An NAACP poll released this past Friday found that 78 percent of Black voters feel the same or more excited to vote in November, compared with their feelings during Barack Obama’s first run for president, in 2008.
The poll revealed some potential challenges for Harris, the first Black and Asian American woman to receive a major party’s presidential nomination. Only 66 percent of Black men over 50 said they plan to support the vice president at the polls. By comparison, 79 percent of Black women over 50 said they would vote for Harris.