Harris is flagging with Latinos. She’s trying to win them over on the economy and the border.

LAS VEGAS — Kamala Harris has vowed to strengthen President Joe Biden’s asylum crackdown at the border. But she hasn’t committed to using that same unilateral authority to offer a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, known as Dreamers.

In a town hall hosted by the Spanish-language television giant Univision set to air Thursday evening, Harris spoke forcefully about establishing an “orderly and humane pathway to earned citizenship for hardworking people.” And asked by 28-year-old Jesús Aispuro, a hospital worker from California, what she would do to help his former classmate Dreamers — who he said “had to live day by day” with “fear” because of their immigration status — the vice president called the situation “a very big example of what the price is to pay for a broken immigration system.”

But she didn’t offer up any specific policies for Dreamers, who have often been viewed and treated differently from other undocumented immigrants because of the circumstances under which they came to the U.S.

“[Dreamers] should not have to live in fear but should have the ability to be on a path to earn their citizenship,” she said.

Though sympathetic, Harris’ comments underscore her prioritization of tough border security measures and comprehensive immigration reform over the more progressive policies she embraced during her 2019 presidential run. It was during that campaign that she pledged to use her presidential power to unilaterally establish a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, though immigration advocates themselves say it’s unclear whether such a policy would even be feasible now given the legal uncertainty around the DACA program.

And her remarks represent a continuation of moderate moves President Joe Bidenhas made, including a policy announced earlier this year to speed up work visas for Dreamers who have graduated college and received employment offers. A federal appeals court on Thursday heard oral arguments in a case over the DACA program, prompting Harris to issue a statement saying that she “will always stand with Dreamers and keep families together.”

Harris vows to ‘reach across the aisle’ on immigration policy

During the hour-long town hall, taped at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Harris emphasized her record prosecuting “transnational criminal organizations” and decrying the pressure former President Donald Trump put on his GOP Senate allies earlier this year to kill bipartisan border security legislation.

The town hall comes as Harris fights to regain support with Latinos, a voting bloc that once reliably supported Democrats but is increasingly embracing Trump.

A national NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll released late last month found Harris at 54 percent support among registered Latino voters, compared to 40 percent for Trump. And support for Democratic presidential candidates among this group has been declining each cycle: Biden earned 61 percent of the Latino in 2020, Hillary Clinton carried 66 percent of this demographic in 2016 and Barack Obama won more than 70 percent of it in 2012.

While Harris’ poll numbers with Latinos have greatly improved from Biden’s earlier this year, they have barely budged since she entered the race this summer.

“The Latino ‘reset’ we were hearing about in the summer is looking more like a ‘return’ to the decade-long slide of Latinos away from Democrats,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “Harris wisely moved hard to the center on border security and populist economic themes but the Democratic branding to Latinos on these issues over the past ten years is proving a challenge to overcome.”

It’s a problem for Harris in Arizona and Nevada, two swing states where her support among Latinos is flagging. Two USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls published this week found Harris leading Trump with Latinos overall 57-38 in Arizona and 56-40 in Nevada, but underwater in both states with Latino men under the age of 50.

But the Harris campaign continues to make appeals to Latinos. On Thursday, it launched a “Hombres con Harris” effort, with events planned in Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma and Nogales in Arizona; Las Vegas, Reno and Sparks in Nevada; and Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. They’ll feature members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, digital creators, and celebrities such as actors Aaron Dominguez and Guillermo Diaz.

And Harris, during the Thursday town hall, drilled into a litany of the pocketbook policy proposals. She spoke about taking on medical debt and price gouging, capping the cost of insulin, expanding the child tax credit, working with the private sector to build 3 million houses, provide downpayment assistance to first-time homebuyers, expand the small business tax credit and establish a new benefit for in-home health care services under Medicare.

“When you just lift up a little bit of the weight, people thrive and we all benefit,” she said. “And so that’s how I think about the economy.”

Her appearance underscores the continued importance of Arizona and Nevada in the presidential race. After the town hall, Harris traveled to Phoenix for a rally late Thursday, one day after JD Vance and Tim Walz rallied supporters in the state on the first day of early voting. Trump will visit Reno, Nevada on Friday, followed by a Latino-focused roundtable in southern Nevada on Saturday and rally in Prescott, Arizona on Sunday.

Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Nevada’s politically powerful Culinary Union, whose membership is majority Latino, told POLITICO that its work this year is “absolutely” more focused on persuasion than it has been in years past. He added that the union’s members continue to feel the pain of pinched wallets, which were hit particularly hard when Las Vegas’ tourism economy came to a sputtering halt during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Look, if the election happened right now, Trump wins in Nevada,” Pappageorge said. “[Democrats] should quit celebrating and get off their butt and knock doors and make phone calls, because this is going to be extremely extremely close in Nevada, closer than it ever has been.”