Can Kamala Harris find her footing on immigration?

In just a matter of hours, a Kamala Harris for President campaign has gone from a far-flung possibility, to all but certain likelihood, and it puts the vice president in a tricky spot.

During his presidency, Joe Biden entrusted Harris with some of the most challenging parts of his portfolio. That includes voting rights, the rollback of reproductive rights and immigration.

Harris has struggled to find her footing on immigration. Early on, she faced criticism for having not visited the southern border.

And as Republicans like Texas Governor Greg Abbott started bussing migrants to northern cities, the vice president's mansion in Washington D.C. even became a drop-off point.

Current criticisms

Now that Biden has stepped aside from the 2024 election race, and endorsed Harris to be the Democratic nominee, this weakness is starting to show as a major sticking point on both sides of the political spectrum.

Republicans have worked quickly to attack her on immigration. GOP Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, speaking sarcastically about Harris over the weekend at a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., said:

"We have to give her credit, my friends, she did serve as border czar during the biggest disaster of open borders that we've had in this country. Let's get President Trump back there, close down that border and bring some common sense and security to this country."

Independent and swing voters also link Harris to problems at the border, says Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who describes herself as a Never Trumper:

"That's one of the things I hear voters sort of bring up about her. That she didn't do anything about the border."

Challenges for candidacy

So how could the Biden administration's record on immigration affect Harris' candidacy?

NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán says it depends on how the narrative is manipulated.

"[Harris] was tasked to lead a pretty broad effort of addressing and finding solutions to the root causes of migration from Central America, big issues like poverty, violence and corruption," Martínez-Beltrán said.

"But conservatives have tried to paint a picture that she's in charge of border policy, hence the made up inaccurate term 'borders czar'. But that's the role of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He's the one who manages all of the immigration agencies."

Martínez-Beltrán explains that despite that narrative, Harris' shifting policy positions over time as a former D.A. in California and now as vice president have hurt her credibilty.

"She's called Trump's border wall a medieval vanity project. And as a senator, she grilled Trump's immigration officials."

But Harris has also angered immigration advocates, like when she made her now infamous 2021 speech warning migrants who were thinking about crossing the border illegally:

"Do not come. Do not come."

Now, immigration activists like Judith Browne Dianis with the civil rights group Advancement Project say Harris will have to make some serious changes to her own policies in order to improve.

"Is it a humanitarian response, or is there a criminalization response?" asks Browne Dianis. "That is not the way to go. We don't need more criminalization. We don't need a border wall. We need to get to root causes. We need to make sure that people are taken care of."