Harris Hits Trump’s Promise of Mass Deportations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday criticized Republican Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of people who are in the United States illegally, questioning whether he would rely on massive raids and detention camps to carry it out.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference that the nation can find both a pathway to citizenship for those who want to come and at the same time secure the border.

“We can do both, and we must do both,” she said.

Trump, for his part, was heading to Uniondale on New York’s Long Island as both candidates took a break Wednesday from campaigning in the toss-up states that will likely decide the Nov. 5 election.

Harris harked back to the Trump administration’s immigration policies as she bid for Hispanic support.

“While we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward,” Harris said. “We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history.”

“Imagine what that would look like and what that would be? How’s that going to happen? Massive raids? Massive detention camps? What are they talking about?” she said.

Former president Trump has promised to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” if he’s elected in November. He has offered no details on how such an operation would work.

Trump, who has leaned into immigration as a top campaign issue, has an advantage over Harris in opinion polling on whom voters trust to better handle the issue.

Trump was expected in Uniondale later in the day, visiting an area that could be key to Republicans maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020, particularly in coastal New York and California, and going on offense to challenge Democrats elsewhere.

Long Island in particular features one of the most closely watched races, between first-term Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and Democrat Laura Gillen. D’Esposito is a former New York Police detective who won in 2022 in a district that Biden won by about 15 percentage points in 2020.

Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social platform that the GOP has “a real chance of winning” New York “for the first time in many decades.” In that same post, Trump also pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.

The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.

Harris’ speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute marked the second day in a row that she has tended to constituencies considered key to the Democratic Party.