Campaign

Trump campaign launches website targeting Harris on ‘border bloodbath’

Republican presidential nominee former President Trump tours the southern border with Mexico, Aug. 22, 2024, in Sierra Vista, Ariz.

The Trump campaign launched a website Friday highlighting fentanyl deaths and arrests of migrants who entered the country illegally as the former president gets increasingly aggressive taking on Vice President Harris on the issue of immigration.

The campaign is using a website, kamalaborderbloodbath.com, to highlight the surge in migrants at the southern border during the Biden administration. The website refers to Harris as the “border czar,” a reference to her assignment to address the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle region of Central America.

The website has dedicated pages for 13 states — including swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada — highlighting fentanyl deaths and crimes committed by migrants in each location.

“President Trump will not stop highlighting Kamala Harris’ failed immigration record on behalf of the Angel Moms and grieving Americans who have senselessly lost loved ones due to Kamala’s border bloodbath,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “If Kamala is given four more years to enact her pro-illegal immigration, open border agenda, America will cease to exist.”

A Trump campaign official said it will spend money on ads to help drive traffic to the website, which argues a vote for Harris is “a vote for an invasion.”

The website launch underscores how the Trump campaign is seeking to make immigration central to its campaign against Harris, who has surged in the polls since becoming the Democratic nominee after President Biden ended his candidacy.

Former President Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday during a visit to Arizona, where he highlighted stories of individuals killed by migrants.

He invited the family members of Rachel Morin, who was killed in Maryland, and Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Texas. Migrants who crossed the border illegally have been arrested in both cases.

Trump spoke in Cochise County with a backdrop of stacks of metal beams, intended to illustrate unfinished portions of a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border that he made central to his first term in office.

Trump has pledged to complete construction of the wall along the border and has promised to enact the largest deportation operation in history if he takes back the White House. He has said deportation efforts would mostly rely on local law enforcement to round up those who entered the country illegally.

Harris and her campaign have attempted to blunt those attacks by blaming Trump for tanking a bipartisan border security proposal put forward earlier this year in the Senate that would have increased resources for law enforcement and cracked down on the number of people who could cross each day.

Democrats have also criticized Trump for his rhetoric on immigration, blasting the former president for saying immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country.

Harris in her convention acceptance speech Thursday night vowed not to “play politics” with border security as she attacked Trump over the issue.

“As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law,” the vice president said. “I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system.”