Comparing the platforms: candidates Harris, Trump talk immigration but do they offer viable solutions?

UNITED STATES ꟷ In Kamala Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 22, 2024 she said, “I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”

Trump’s 93-minute speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2024, went in and out of the border issue. In short, Trump touted his achievements, pointed out perceived failings of the Biden-Harris administration, and made some promises.

Media pundits reacting to the speeches leave us wanting. While some parrot their preferred candidate’s talking points, others say the conventions did not deliver enough. They assert it is not enough to promise border security; we need to hear solutions.

So, what are the solutions according to each candidate, and according to experts? Saying the candidates have no solutions is not entirely true. Which candidate makes a stronger case, and what solutions remain missing from the conversation?

Harris-Walz to resurface the Border Act of 2024

Speaking at the DNC, Harris said, “After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades.” She continued, “But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So, he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. Here is my pledge to you: As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.”

Republican leaders endorsed the draft then voted against the very bill they helped craft. The American Immigration Council, while criticizing elements of the bill, called it “a serious attempt to acknowledge, and solve, some of the key problems with current border and asylum policy, and to address the federal government’s failure to manage migration in a way that supports American communities and respects humanitarian needs.”

The National Border Patrol Council, representing 18,000 agents and personnel, endorsed the bill. They said, “The Border Act of 2024 will codify into law authorities that U.S. Border Patrol agents never had in the past. This will allow us to remove single adults expeditiously and without a lengthy judicial review, which historically has required the release of these individuals into the interior of the U.S.”

They went on, “This alone will drop illegal border crossings nationwide and will allow a great many of our agents to get back to detecting and apprehending those who want to cross our borders illegally and evade apprehension. While not perfect, the Border Act of 2024 is a step in the right direction and is far better than the status quo…” More on this later.

Trump speaks at length on the border and immigration at the RNC

Throughout the night, Trump talked about the border. “Under our leadership, the United States will be respected again,” he said. “No nation will question our power. No enemy will doubt our might. Our borders will be totally secure… We also have an illegal immigration crisis – a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities all across our land… I will end the illegal immigration crisis by closing our border and finishing the wall, most of which I have already built.”

He went on, “But no hope or dream we have for America can succeed unless we stop the illegal immigrant invasion at our Southern Border… At the heart of the Republican platform is our pledge to end this border nightmare, and to fully restore the sacred and sovereign borders of the United States of America on day one.”

Trump spoke over 600 additional words on the border – too much to share here. In summary, he said his administration created the securest border in history, ended catch-and-release, shut down asylum fraud, stopped human trafficking, forged historic agreements to keep illegal aliens on foreign soil, and immediately apprehended and deported those who entered illegally.

In what some are calling fearmongering, he titled the border problem “the greatest invasion in history,” said the current administration “does nothing to stop them,” and said the world is laughing at us, “They think we’re stupid.” Contrary to evidence, he said the immigration wave is comprised of prisoners, people from insane asylums, terrorists, murderers, and drug dealers.

His promise: to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country and to keep sons and daughters safe by preventing killers and criminals into the country.

The Trump presidency’s former border policies and Biden’s repeals

The U.S. Border with Mexico stretches 1,951 miles. When Trump became President, 654 miles of various types of fencing remained in place. The Trump administration claimed they built 400 miles of wall, but most of that included replacing or repairing existing structures. In reality, they built 80 miles of barriers including 47 miles of primary wall and 33 of secondary wall as reinforcement. If we do the math, the preexisting 654 miles of wall grew to about 701 miles, leaving 1,250 miles of border without a wall. The project price tag fell in the range of $3 billion of American money.

Trump said Biden terminated all his policies upon taking office. Biden did take action. He suspended construction of the wall citing too high a price tag for marginal results. In addition, he suspended Trump’s Remain in Mexico program which sent 6,500 immigrants back to Mexico to await hearings. Biden began processing those active cases, allowing migrants to re-enter the U.S. to await hearings. Trump’s Title 42 bill restricted migration due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Biden kept it in place until 2023 when the viral threat passed.

Trump’s Safe Third Agreements or Asylum Cooperative Agreements refused asylum to those arriving at the border. Instead, the U.S. could fly them to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to apply for asylum there, which turned out to be misleading. The agreements forced those countries’ cooperation by threatening tariff increases, remittance taxes, and travel bans. Congressional investigations found no one sent to Guatemala received asylum. People were forced back to home countries in violation of U.S. and international law. Biden repealed the ineffective and illegal solution.

Criminals, murderers, drug dealers, and terrorists invading America

Trump says immigrants are terrorists, murders, drug dealers, escaped prisoners, and mental patients. He says the immigrants at the border spread disease, crime, and create poverty throughout America. Is this true? The U.S. Border Patrol tracks statistics on criminal actions by non-citizens.

In this case, Trump shows some results. In 2017, border patrol reported 8,531 convictions and by 2020 it dropped to 2,438. However, we must keep in mind how COVID-19 effectively shut the world down, stopping the movement of people altogether. So, crime dropped across the board and may have had nothing to do with immigration policy. Nevertheless, by 2024, the number reached 14,697 under Biden. Yet, 61 percent of those convictions were for illegal entry or re-entry into the U.S. One might argue Biden prosecuted more cases of illegal entry than Trump did.

Despite some politicians citing individual cases of American citizens being harmed by an undocumented immigrant, a slew of research studies dash the idea that immigrants are killers and drug lords. The CATO Institute studied Texas in 2019 and found undocumented immigrants are 37.1 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than a citizen. The New York Times and The Marshall Project cited extensive studies showing no link between undocumented immigrants and rise in violent or property crimes.

The Council on Criminal Justice said crime dropped since April 2022 in most reporting cities and where increases occurred, the trends began in 2021 before the upsurge in undocumented immigrants. 

Back to The Border Act of 2024

What would the Border Act which Harris promised to pass achieve? Here’s what we know. The bill includes $20 billion for border security. Some of its finer points promise:

-The addition of 1,500 personnel in border patrol
-Adding 4,300 Asylum Officers to the existing 1,000 to address a backlog of cases, which currently take five to seven years to process
-Adding 100 immigration judges to the existing 734
-Increasing beds in Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers from 40,000 to 50,000
-Installing 100 cutting edge fentanyl detection machines at southern border ports of entry
-$1.4 billion for cities and states offering critical services to newcomers
-Expediting work permits for those who qualify to come into the country

Trump retaliated against the bill by saying, “only a fool, or a radical left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous legislation.” Harris, on the other hand, says she seeks to balance pathways to citizenship with border security.

Firstly, America is not alone, nor or we the laughingstock of the world. A post COVID-19 global refugee crisis has created a wave everywhere, not just America. It includes 7.5 million displaced Venezuelans, six million of whom never came to the U.S. Humanitarian, political, and environmental crises in Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, Cuba, and Nicaragua to name a few multiply the issue. The Russian invasion of Ukraine sent millions into neighboring countries.

According to Statista, there are more conflicts and displaced people on earth today than ever before. The American Immigration Council did a great job of analyzing the Biden-Harris bill in detail to outline what it achieves and what it does not, offering non-political suggestions for improving some of its policies – suggestions a bipartisan team could review.

Trump’s plan for the border should he be elected

In his words, Trump will build a wall and execute mass deportations at a level never seen before. Harris’ plan has a price tag of $20 billion. What about Trump’s? We know 80 miles of wall cost about $3 billion. With 1,250 miles remaining, Americans could incur another $47 billion price tag.

Trump says little about what mass deportation might look like. The Heritage Foundation [the organization behind the controversial Project 2025], does very clearly outline mass deportations. While Trump claims not to know anything about the Foundation’s playbook, his VP nominee JD Vance maintains deep ties to the Heritage Foundation. Just recently, Vance wrote the foreword to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ new book.

Here is what Project 2025 outlines in terms of methods for mass deportations and immigration:

-Mass detentions and family separations including eliminating benefits for unaccompanied minors
-Elimination of family-based immigration and Daca or what we know as the “dreamers”
-Removing ICE prohibitions and allowing for raids in sensitive zones like schools, hospitals, and religious institutions
-Expedited deportations that remove due process and detention, and removal without a warrant
-Use of the military and potentially engaging in war with drug cartels in Mexico
-Restricting legal immigration by barring certain nationalities and groups from accessing visas

In Vance’s foreward to the Heritage Foundation President’s new book he wrote, “The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems—we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach… We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets.” So, is this Trump’s plan and if not, how else do you execute the largest deportation in history? How closely are Trump and Vance aligned with the far right and Christian nationalists? The ties appear to run deep, and Project 2025 gives concrete steps to Trump’s mass deportation suggestion.

The choices voters face and the faces behind immigration

When voters arrive at polling places and submit mail-in ballots for President and Vice President in the U.S. in November, the border will be on their minds. Do they want Harris’ recommitment to the bipartisan Border Act 2024 that seeks to balance humanitarian immigration with policies to secure the border? Or, do they want Trump’s wall and mass deportations? Do they want the far-right Heritage Foundation’s recommendations to raid, round up, and detain immigrants including with military force? Are Trump’s plans synonymous with Project 2025? Which America will we choose and eventually become?

Orato World Media takes a keen interest in immigration stories from around the globe. Having published nearly 50 stories on the topic, we capture testimony from people who experience both migration and creative immigration solutions firsthand. From what we have learned, it becomes hard to ignore the obvious. Immigration and the migration of refugees is a global issue which affects all developed countries.

Perhaps, in deciding how to vote in November, reading these first-person news stories offers a face to the crisis. They include David Yambio, kidnapped and forced to serve as a child soldier in Sudan before escaping to Italy to become an international activist. Or Soraida Ledezma, one of a group of Venezuelan immigrants welcomed into a failing village in Spain, effectively revitalizing an aging community.

They include Consuelo Manyoma who details the day Mexican cartel members overtook her idealistic town, forcing a whole community to find refuge in an old sports stadium. And Alessandra Cutolo in Rome, who works with immigrants living in Spin Time Labs – a former office building turned multicultural housing project for displaced people from all corners of the earth.

Stories like these beg the question: can immigration policy go beyond security and crisis response to spur economic growth, revitalization, and opportunity for immigrants and Americans both? We know one thing for certain. The team that wins in November will set the stage for years of policy in response to this global emergency.