How Harris is getting Trump-y on immigration

• Some immigration advocates on the left argue that Harris' sudden election-year embrace of harsh rules has weakened her leverage to push for pathways to citizenship for select populations and other pro-immigration policies she supports.

Driving the news: Harris has shifted from framing herself as an advocate for the undocumented to touting herself as a former border state prosecutor who will be more effective than Trump on the southern border.

• If elected, Harris is pledging to curtail who's able to claim asylum, and pursue felony charges for illegal border crossings. She'd also continue building a border wall.
• Harris told a crowd in Nevada recently: "I will protect our nation's sovereignty, secure our border and work to fix our broken system of immigration."
• Recently, her campaign began airing an ad in which a narrator declares: "We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that's Kamala Harris."

Between the lines: Some Democrats have been frustrated that Harris and the Biden administration recently embraced restrictions on asylum that resemble Trump policies they once opposed.

• Andrea Flores, a former Biden White House official who worked on immigration, lamented that Biden's team tried to get tougher asylum restrictions, but Republicans then started criticizing immigrants who are here legally through programs that allow them to stay in the U.S. temporarily — moving the goalposts once again.
• Flores, now the vice president of immigration policy at FWD.us, told Axios: "The fact that [the Biden administration] had to amend their latest asylum restriction after three months shows that this is the wrong approach. We don't have to choose between a functional asylum system and a secure border."
• Harris now backs changes to make the restrictions longer-lasting.

The other side: Biden and Harris argue their asylum restrictions are better than Trump's previous attempts because of new ways they offer people to enter the country legally to seek protection — through an app and programs that allow certain populations to stay in the U.S. temporarily while they're applying to stay permanently.

• But these programs never guaranteed a pathway to stay in the U.S. permanently.
• The administration has decided not to extend the temporary protections through these programs for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians — leaving potentially hundreds of thousands of people in legal limbo.

Zoom in: Harris has promised to crack down on felony prosecutions of illegal border crossings, after repeatedly saying she wanted to decriminalize them in 2019.

• She now supports extending rules that essentially cut off access to asylum to anyone who crosses the border illegally — forcing them back into Mexico or rapidly returning them to their home country.

In 2019, she criticized similar policies: "These families seeking asylum are often fleeing extreme violence. And what happens when they arrive? Trump says, 'Go back to where you came from.' "

• Harris continues to tout the bipartisan border bill that Trump pushed Republicans in Congress to reject. It includes hundreds of millions of dollars for border wall construction.
• In 2019, Harris was one of five Senate Democrats to vote against a border security spending bill that triggered a lengthy government shutdown.

Reality check: While Harris has moved in Trump's direction, the two are not the same on immigration.

• Trump has promised to implement some of the most disruptive border enforcement efforts in U.S. history including the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants ever.
• He wants to build massive migrant detention camps, unleash the U.S. military on cartels in Mexico, impose a naval embargo to stop drug smuggling, involve more federal law enforcement in migrant arrest teams, and more.
• "Send them back" has become a frequent chant at Trump's rallies when he talks about cracking down on undocumented people as well as recent immigrants who temporarily have legal status.

What they're saying: Harris' campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story, and has been mum on whether she still supports what have long been top Democratic priorities for immigration policy.

• Harris' campaign has declined to say whether she still supports the immigration reform bill Biden's team proposed on Day 1 of his presidency that would have provided expedited pathways to citizenship to DACA recipients and Temporary Protected Status holders, among other things.
• Her campaign also has declined to say whether she would still take executive actions to try to provide a pathway to citizenship for "Dreamers" — a series of maneuvers she proposed in detail while running for president in 2019.