Amid relentless criticism from former President Trump that she is responsible for out-of-control illegal immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday made her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since 2021, announcing more stringent measures she would take as president to restrict border entry.

“The United States is a sovereign nation, and I believe we have a duty to set rules at our border, and to enforce them,” Harris told a crowd in Douglas, Ariz., gathered in a small auditorium at Cochise College Douglas Campus, where the stage was flanked by large signs that read, “Border security and stability.” “We are also a nation of immigrants. The United States has been enriched by generations of people who have come from every corner of the world to contribute to our country and to become part of the American story.”

Harris said she would go beyond Biden administration policies to further restrict border access outside of official ports of entry.

Earlier in the afternoon, Harris visited a port of entry less than 10 miles from the campaign event. Two Border Patrol agents walked with her along the towering fence, which was built during the Obama administration. Harris later told reporters that she had thanked them for their work.

“They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job. They are very dedicated,” she said. “And so I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them.”

She advocated for hiring more officers and adding more fentanyl detection systems at border entry points.

“I reject the false choice that suggest we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”

Immigration reform has bedeviled presidents of both parties for decades.

A bipartisan proposal earlier this year that combined increased funding for border security and foreign aid for Ukraine appeared to be the first breakthrough until it was derailed when Trump urged Republicans to oppose it.

Kamala Harris speaks at Cochise College Douglas Campus in Douglas, Ariz., on Friday.

(Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

That deal fell short of comprehensive plans discussed for decades that would revamp the asylum system and the legal immigration process and provide a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people in the country without legal authorization, including those who arrived as children. Harris on Friday mentioned farm workers and immigrants who arrived as children, known as “Dreamers.”

“As president, I will put politics aside to fix our immigration system and find solutions to problems which have persisted for far too long,” Harris said.

In advance of Harris’ visit to the border, Trump pointed to reports that there are more than 425,000 convicted criminals who are in the country illegally but not detained by federal authorities, according to data provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to a lawmaker’s request.

That includes more than 13,000 convicted of homicide and more than 15,800 convicted of sexual assault, according to the ICE data shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).

Trump said Thursday that 21 million people entered the country illegally in just the last four years. He framed the bipartisan effort that he helped defeat as “her atrocious border bill.”

“It was not a border bill. It was an amnesty bill … ,” he said at a news conference in Manhattan. “Fortunately Congress was too smart for it.”

The bill would not have provided a path to citizenship for people who lack legal status.

The GOP nominee’s appearance at Trump Tower was reminiscent of his 2015 campaign announcement there, notably his references to other nations purposefully sending criminals to the United States.

His remarks included multiple falsehoods, such as saying Harris approved a raft of changes to the nation’s immigration policies that as vice president she had no control over, and that she was the Biden administration’s “border czar.” She had been charged with trying to improve conditions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to stop those nations’ residents from fleeing their homelands.

That assignment has been a political headache for Harris — drawing criticism from the left and right.

In a 2021 visit to Central America, Harris told would-be migrants that they would be deported if they crossed the border, angering allies of immigrants who said they were fleeing poverty, corruption and violence.

“Do not come,” she said at the time. “You will be turned back.”

On the same trip, Harris laughed off questions in a nationally televised interview about why she had not yet visited the border as vice president, inflaming critics on the right.

Both political parties are hyper-focused on immigration because while the presidential race is very tight in the polling, Trump has a double-digit edge on the issue of border security. That edge has narrowed, however, since President Biden decided not to seek reelection and Harris garnered the support to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

Border stops hit a record in December, with agents making nearly 250,000 arrests. As the political problem raged, Biden signed an order in June to heavily restrict asylum claims, prompting a sharp drop in border encounters, to fewer than 60,000 in July and August.

Republicans have been hammering the issue, with GOP members of Congress filing a resolution that “strongly condemns the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border” one day after the president announced he would not seek reelection.

While some of the former president and his allies’ claims are demonstrably false and have been denounced by GOP elected officials, such as allegations that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, concerns among some voters about the impact of an insecure border on the economy, crime and the fentanyl crisis are palpable in many communities.

Friday’s visit was Harris’ second to Arizona since she became the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the Harris-Walz campaign. While Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and others have swung through the southwestern battleground state, Harris has focused much of her in-person campaigning in critical states farther east, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.

Hours before the vice president landed in Arizona, Republicans held a press call featuring two mothers whose daughters were raped and killed by immigrants who were in the country illegally and the mother of a teenage son who overdosed on fentanyl. The women lambasted Harris for the administration’s immigration policy and for visiting the border so close to the election.

“I’m trying very hard not to cry. We live 1,800 miles away from the border,” said Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a mother of five who was brutally attacked while walking a bucolic and well-traveled public trail in Maryland. Her body was discovered in a drain pipe.

“No one is safe in America, no one is safe. If you have a sanctuary city in your state, you’re not safe,” she said. “They have bused, flown, trained illegal immigrants to literally every nook and cranny and every tiny town in the whole of the United States.”

Such fears are among the reasons the Harris campaign released an ad about immigration in Arizona on Friday, and visited the Southern border less than a month and a half before election day. As vice president, she previously visited the region once in 2021, when she toured the port of entry and border operation in El Paso.

Mehta reported from Phoenix and Pinho reported from Douglas. Times staff writers Noah Bierman and Andrea Castillo contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.