Speaking to supporters in Georgia, Trump brought up reports Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday to see the border for the first time as the Democratic nominee. 

“She’s going to the border very soon. She hasn’t been there for four years,” Trump said of Harris, adding that when she served as vice president, “she didn’t do anything.”

“When Kamala is seen at the border on Friday, she will pass hundreds of miles of wall that was built by Trump, and it’s wall that really works,” he added.

Immigration and border security have emerged as top vulnerabilities for both the vice president and Democrats heading into the 2024 general election as illegal border crossings have skyrocketed over the past four years.

President Joe Biden and Harris took significant steps to the right on the issue over the past year, including attempts to broker a bipartisan border reform bill this past spring and executive action to limit asylum, which in turn has angered pro-immigration activists.

Harris had planned to visit Arizona on Friday, and several outlets have reported her trip will also include a stop at the U.S.-Mexico border, though details on the location have not been announced. 

Though Republicans have blamed Harris for the record levels of border crossings seen earlier in Biden’s presidency, her visiting the border didn’t help convince the Trump crowd she was serious. 

Multiple attendees outright laughed when asked by the Washington Examiner about reports that Harris is preparing a border excursion in the final months of the campaign.

“It’s about damn time, isn’t it?” Georgia resident Jamie Kennedy exclaimed. “She hasn’t done anything. I think it’s hysterical. Wait until the very last second to pull something out of your pocket.”

Biden himself traveled to the border in April, and Melissa Weatherly, a registered nurse from Savannah, questioned why Harris “didn’t go sooner.”

“Should’ve went a whole lot sooner than now,” Weatherly claimed. “I mean, we’ve got people in Georgia who have been killed, like Laken Riley, and it’s all because of her insecure border.”

“It’s funny how she’s decided to do it now that she’s running for president, but they did everything they could do to not have a border forever until all of a sudden,” added Jody Lanier, a 57-year-old real estate professional from southeastern Georgia who referred to Harris as “Johnny Come Lately.”

“Now she knows that’s the top campaign issue, and she’s just trying to act like she is involved,” he continued. “But really and truly, they’re the ones that caused most of the problems.”

Ethan Miller, a political science student at Georgia Southern University, similarly criticized Harris for the final weeks of the campaign to plan a trip.

“I think it’s awfully convenient that they always go to the southern border during an election year, but they never go to it when they’re actually in office to fix it,” he told the Washington Examiner. “So I think it’s a publicity stunt.”

Shortly after Harris entered the race in late July, Republicans sharpened immigration-focused attacks concerning the vice president’s infamous tenure as Biden’s informal border czar.

Those attacks appear to be bearing fruit, as internet searches for immigration have skyrocketed since August compared to other top election issues, according to Google Trends and the Associated Press, with the highest bump coming in Ohio.

The Ohio factor can likely be explained by Trump’s claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating the cats and dogs of city residents. The former president was fact-checked live by the moderators during his debate with Harris on ABC News after doubling down on the conspiracy theory, with his comments becoming viral memes on social media.

Harris, however, has not been able to capitalize on Trump’s immigration missteps. During the debate, when asked how she would fix the broken immigration system, the vice president instead segued into an attack on Trump’s campaign crowd sizes. 

Furthermore, Harris maintains that she will reduce the number of illegal border crossings while also providing a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” and other illegal permanent residents. She has said she would back the Senate-Biden border bill that failed to advance earlier this year, but key Republican negotiators on that legislation all but guaranteed to the Washington Examiner that 2024’s border bill would never make it to Harris’s desk to be signed into law.

“When you get into 2025, it’s a different moment,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said in an interview. “We have no idea what the border is going to be, and I have no optimism that President Harris would enforce the border any different than President Biden has. But at that point, you’re not going to just take a bill as-is and drop it into a new year and say that’s what it’s going to be.”

Polling shows Trump maintaining a sizable advantage over Harris when it comes to their respective immigration policies.

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A New York Times-Sienna College poll published Monday found voters in the Sun Belt battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina rank immigration second place, in a tie with abortion, among all issues this cycle, trailing just the economy. 

According to that data, 54% of respondents trusted Trump more on the issue, compared to 43% who backed the vice president.