The southern border is Kamala Harris’s biggest political liability

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. KAMALA HARRIS’S candidacy has injected some energy into what had been a poisonous presidential race between two old men who bickered over their golf games on national television. But her ascension comes with risks.

As Joe Biden’s vice-president, Ms Harris is in essence running as an incumbent. She will inherit his weaknesses, which Republicans are more than ready to exploit. That is most evident on immigration.

On July 25th House Republicans (with six Democrats) passed a resolution condemning her for failing to “secure the border". Donald Trump talks about her potential presidency in apocalyptic terms. “Kamala Harris will make the invasion exponentially worse," he told reporters.

“Our whole country will be permanently destroyed." In 2016 Mr Trump manufactured a border crisis to whip up fear and loathing. But now the crisis is real: migrant encounters at America’s southern border have surged during the Biden administration. There were nearly 2.5m apprehensions at the border in fiscal year 2023, a record.

Encounters have fallen by more than half since their peak in December thanks to increased enforcement from Mexico and an executive order that Mr Biden signed in June tightening asylum. But polling from The Economist and YouGov suggests that 14% of registered voters view immigration as the most important issue facing the country, second only to inflation. In 2021 Mr Biden tasked Ms Harris with looking at the “root causes" of migration in Central America.