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, leaned heavily on his alarmist message on immigration as he held
a rally in Uniondale on New York’s Long Island, focusing the bulk of his
remarks on the subject.
“We’re
just destroying the fabric of life in our country. And we’re not going to take
it any longer. And you got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot,” Trump
said.
Both
candidates took a break Wednesday from campaigning in the toss-up states that
will likely decide the Nov. 5 election. The former president drew a large,
roaring crowd, giving him a chance to show deep support even in a blue state.
He
ripped into Democratic leadership in New York City and state, blaming them for
homeless people living in what he called “horrible, disgusting, dangerous,
filthy encampments,” and even the conditions on the New York City subway, which
he called “squalid and unsafe” and promised to renovate.
“What
the hell do you have to lose?” he said in asking for their votes.
Before
heading out to the suburbs, Trump stopped at a Bitcoin cafe in New York City.
Trump has recently embraced cryptocurrency and on Monday night helped launch
his family’s new cryptocurrency venture.
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.
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
has focused on immigration as a top campaign issue and made it a key focus of
his remarks Wednesday.
“Look
at what’s happening,” he told his crowd in New York. “Businesses that are
fleeing, money draining out of your state and hundreds of thousands of illegal
migrants sucking your public resources dry.”
Trump
said he plans in the next two weeks to visit Springfield, Ohio, which has been
the center of false accusations from the former president and his running mate
JD Vance that members of the city’s Haitian community are abducting and eating
cats and dogs. Trump also said he plans to visit Aurora, Colorado, where he
says a Venezuelan street gang with a small presence in the city has taken over
a rundown apartment complex. Aurora police say that’s not the case.
He
has an advantage over Harris in opinion polling on whom voters trust to better
handle the issue.
Meanwhile,
the Teamsters labor union declined to endorse either Harris or Trump, saying
neither had sufficient support from its 1.3 million members.
Harris
had met Monday with a panel of Teamsters, having long courted organized labor
and made support for the middle class her central policy goal. Trump met
earlier in the year with a panel of Teamsters, and its president, Sean O’Brien,
spoke at his invitation at the Republican National Convention.
Trump’s
rally Wednesday night was in Uniondale, 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.
On
Tuesday, she sat for an interview in Philadelphia with members of the National
Association of Black Journalists. She decried Trump’s rhetoric and said voters
should make sure he “can’t have that microphone again.” She has trips planned
later in the week to Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.
Trump
is attempting to return to his campaign cadence after Sunday’s apparent
assassination attempt as he golfed in Florida. On Tuesday, he traveled to
Flint, Michigan, and has not appeared to alter plans for upcoming trips to the
nation’s capital and North Carolina later in the week.
His
running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, held an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on
Wednesday.