US presidential election sees ramped-up rhetoric on border and immigration

With less than a month to go, candidates in this year’s US presidential election are ramping up their rhetoric about how their policies will deal with immigration, security along the US-Mexico border and other issues of migration.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has railed against President Joe Biden’s so-called open border policies. Trump has promised mass deportations if he’s elected again, and his campaign told the Associated Press that he would use the military and wartime powers to overcome legal hurdles to do so. 

Vice President Kamala Harris has said that if she’s elected, she will support a new version of a bipartisan Senate bill that failed to pass in Congress earlier this year after Republican senators voted to block it. The measure would have provided funding for more Border Patrol agents, customs personnel, asylum officers and a larger border wall. 

Bruce Bracker is a business owner and local politician in Nogales, Arizona — the American side of a bustling, cross-border community and multi-billion-dollar trade hub collectively known as Ambos Nogales. He said this isn’t the first time his community has been in the political spotlight.

“And I’m not saying it’s just the Republicans, plenty of Democrats do it, too,” he said. “If you want to keep getting reelected and you want to keep using the same wolf whistle to attract your base, then the border is a good thing to never solve.”

Meanwhile, under a restriction imposed by the Biden administration this summer and finalized this fall, most migrants picked up by Border Patrol agents are quickly sent back to Mexico or their home countries without a chance to ask for asylum — despite a US law allowing them to do that.

The Biden administration said the rule was needed to respond to the high number of people at the border, and to cut down on a backlog of asylum cases stuck in immigration courts. 

Tyler Mattiace, who researches the Americas with Human Rights Watch, said the policy is an extension of a decades-old practice along the US-Mexico border called prevention through deterrence. In other words, the restriction aims to reduce migration by making it harder to do so. 

“Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush and Clinton all had immigration policies that were based on starting from the presumption that immigration is something that’s bad, that we need to reduce,” Mattiace explained.

And as the November election approaches, the issue will continue to remain a hot-button topic for Americans as they vote in the next administration.