The mayor of the border town Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit on Friday said his community felt the squeeze at the height of the border crisis.
Donald Huish — the mayor of Douglas, Arizona, for the past four years — told the Daily Caller News Foundation that his local government was put on the brink when Title 42 was first lifted and illegal migrants crossed en masse. Harris, who has faced criticism of her handling of the immigration crisis, is preparing to visit the town and highlight border security issues.
“We were worried,” Huish said to the DCNF. “We were concerned. We were trying to figure out how we were going to handle this because we had nowhere to put them.”
“There’s no major transportation out of our community,” the mayor continued. “We have a couple of shuttle vans to transfer people out to Tucson or Phoenix, but we didn’t know where to put [the large number of migrants].”
More than 450,000 migrants have illegally crossed into the Tucson Border Patrol Sector in fiscal year 2024, according to CBP data.
The Biden-Harris administration lifted Title 42 in May 2023, putting an end to a Covid-era measure that was helping keep the U.S.-Mexico border under control. That decision, however, came at a time when the administration was continuing to deal with a massive spike in illegal border crossings.
Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million migrants attempting to illegally cross into the country, according to the latest figures by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The large influx of foreign nationals has placed a strain on major sanctuary cities such as New York City, Chicago and Denver, particularly after Texas Gov. Greg Abbot began bussing migrants into their jurisdictions.
Harris is set to visit Douglas later Friday evening to discuss immigration issues, her first trip to the border since becoming her party’s presidential nominee. The vice president will give remarks calling for tougher border security, according to CBS News.
Since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has shifted her position on immigration enforcement, taking on a more hawkish stance. The vice president now says she believes in “consequence[s]” for those who enter the country illegally, and campaign ads now say she supports more Border Patrol agents on the ground.
Huish says his town was able to avoid disaster, however, thanks in large part to transportation assistance to get illegal migrants out of the area via federally-funded buses.
“But fortunately through local churches, we were able to provide shelter for them until the buses came to transport them out to Tucson,” the mayor said. “If we didn’t have that, we would’ve been in a world of hurt.”
“Fortunately for us, it worked out well,” he said. “Do I want to go through it again? No, I do not because it was nerve-wracking and we didn’t know what was going on. It was a federal issue that ended up on our doorstep.”
As for who the mayor believes would be better for border security, he played his cards close to the vest. Huish said he just hopes whoever is elected, Harris or former President Donald Trump, takes border security seriously, and he believes that both appear to be doing so.
Another local leader, Douglas city council member Danya Acosta, said the situation in Douglas was hectic when Title 42 was lifted, but that she also remained optimistic on Harris’ latest border proposals.
“While it is true that the immigration crisis surged after the expiration of Title 42, largely because there was no comprehensive replacement plan in place, I believe Vice President Kamala Harris’ immigration proposal offers a more thoughtful and sustainable solution than the current approach,” Acosta said to the DCNF.
“As Vice President Harris visits Douglas today to highlight border issues, it is an opportunity for our community to engage in these important discussions and reflect on what truly comprehensive immigration reform could look like,” Acosta continued. “I am hopeful that her visit will further the conversation around lasting solutions that reflect both compassion and pragmatism.”
Other local leaders were more blunt in their preference for who was better fit to handle border security.
“No one reached out to me about the visit,” Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd told the DCNF. The city of Douglas sits within the Cochise County lines.
The supervisor added that “the border regions and our county is considerably more unsafe than when Trump was in office!”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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