Along with the economy, healthcare, and democracy, voters have consistently said they are concerned about border security and the impact of illegal immigration on their lives.

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Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have approached the concerns very differently.

Trump, who won in 2016 on a promise to build a border wall with Mexico, has focused on ending illegal immigration, including crimes committed by non-U.S. citizens and the financial impact that millions of immigrants released into the country have had on cities, states, and American jobs. Meanwhile, Harris said she’d prioritize congressional legislation to shore up border security and work to stop transnational criminal organizations.

“While it’s a signature issue for Trump, it’s a purely defensive issue for Harris,” said Matt Wolking, vice president of communications at Republican political consulting firm, Axiom Strategies, wrote in an email.

Immigration’s rise to the top

A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Oct. 25 revealed that immigration had tied abortion as the second-most important issue to U.S. voters just a week ahead of the election. Only the economy beat out immigration and abortion.

That, in and of itself, shows the magnitude that Americans feel personally impacted by immigration and border policies, but deeper down in the survey is another example of why some are so concerned with border security, according to former federal immigration judge Andrew R. Arthur, who now works for a nonpartisan immigration organization that advocates for stricter immigration protocols.

“A large swath of the electorate views ‘immigrants/immigration’ as a threat to American democracy,” wrote Arthur wrote in a blog post Friday. “That’s an unfortunate but likely inevitable result of nearly four years of bad border policy.”

The concern comes after 10 million immigrants have been encountered by federal immigration officials at the nation’s border in just three and a half years — more than even any two-term president. Among those encountered have been several hundred people on the FBI terrorism watch list.

Trump outperformed Harris — 54% to 43% — on who is the better person to address immigration, giving Harris more reason to talk about immigration and try to improve her reputation with voters, and another for Trump to keep the issue alive.

More than three out of five men polled said Trump would do a better job than Harris, as did nearly three in five white voters and respondents with a bachelor’s degree.

“If — and this is a really big if because the Times/Siena poll is one of the best — more male voters are so concerned about immigration and so convinced that Trump is the only person who can address that issue that they actually show up to vote, it could tip the tight race in favor of the GOP candidate,” Arthur said.

“That’s likely why I see so many Trump or conservative PAC ads focusing on the border while I’m watching football in my (current) home swing state of North Carolina,” he added.

Trump goes on offense

Trump made a break from the seven battleground states to visit the southern border state of New Mexico Thursday, a blue state that has not gone to a GOP presidential candidate since former President George W. Bush in 2004.

“They all said, ‘Don’t come.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘You can’t win New Mexico.’ I said, ‘Look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico.’ … Why? They don’t want to stop the people pouring across the border that are murderers? They’re killers. They’re drug addicts. They’re drug dealers. They’re gang members,’” said Trump.

The impact of the more than 5 million illegal immigrants released into the U.S. from the southern border has been felt by sanctuary cities more than 1,000 miles north of the southern border. Democratic mayors of New York City, Chicago, and Washington all pleaded with the Biden-Harris administration in 2022 for federal help.

“A big reason why this issue is resonating widely is because the Biden-Harris Administration relocated tens of millions of illegals to every corner of the country,” Wolking said in an email. “It’s not just states on the southwest border that are grappling with the negative consequences of illegal immigration: chaos in schools, higher housing costs, lower wages for working class Americans, increased violent crime, and shortages in social safety net programs.”

This past week, Trump has repeated his claims on “migrant crime,” the term he uses to speak about crimes committed against U.S. citizens by illegal immigrants. Trump met privately with the family of Marine veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets, who was murdered in late October while driving in Mexico on vacation. The suspected gunman who killed Quets is believed to be affiliated with the Mexican cartels.

On Thursday evening in Henderson, Nevada, Trump pulled the Arizona family on stage and asked them to speak with rallygoers about their experience.

“Some of Trump’s most powerful moments on the campaign trail have been when he met with Americans who were victimized by illegals or lost loved ones due to crimes committed by people who never should have been in the country to begin with,” Wolking said. “When Democrats dismiss this, they appear callous and indifferent to Americans. By driving the issue, Trump appears sympathetic and caring.”

Harris tries to look forward, not back

Harris has touted that the border crisis — a reference to the highest-ever number of illegal immigrants arrested at the southern border in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration — has ended.

President Joe Biden appointed Harris the “border czar” in early 2021 to address the reasons that people in Central American countries were migrating to the U.S.

Harris has maintained throughout her campaign and over the past few days that the White House was able to get the border under better control and that it shows she is capable of being commander in chief.

For this reason, bolstering border security, not the problems caused by illegal immigration, has been at the center of her messaging on immigration.

Harris has also looked back at her time in office as vice president, but only to point to an incident that occurred last winter when Trump told Republicans not to support a bipartisan Senate border package that would have implemented a slew of new border policies, as well as added more federal police at the border.

Harris has attacked Trump for holding up what would have been the first bipartisan deal on immigration in more than 20 years, saying he would rather campaign on the issue than fix it.

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When asked about her plan for the border and immigration, Harris is quick to note that immigrants have great value to the country, but has refused to explain countless times what she would do on the issue, even if she would continue Biden-era initiatives.

“Initially, Harris seemed to be trying to outflank Trump by proactively talking about the failed Senate bill, but her campaign saw it wasn’t effective with voters and gave up,” said Wolking. “Now it’s just a fig leaf she uses to avoid answering questions about the border crisis, as we saw in her interviews on 60 Minutes and Fox News.”