The Trump campaign issues its first border attack ad against VP Harris. Senate appropriators won't have a 2025 Homeland Security bill ready before August recess.

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Developments

Donald Trump’s campaign released its first television ad of the general election, and it focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border. It “attacks likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris as an evasive, weak and distracted leader who did not protect the U.S.-Mexico border from drug trafficking, increased migrant crossings and a possible terrorism threat,” the Washington Post reported.

The ad begins with an image of Harris and the line, “This is ‘America’s Border Czar,’ and she has failed us.” The Vice President, who was tasked only with addressing root causes of migration in Central America, never held such a title.

“She was given a very hard, difficult, convoluted portfolio,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, told Reuters of the “Central America root causes” role that the Biden administration assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris in early 2021. The Reuters report goes on to evaluate the objectives that Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, pursued in that role.

The Senate Appropriations Committee was set to mark up (amend and approve a draft of) the 2025 Homeland Security Appropriations bill, which funds DHS and its components. It will not do so, however, due to disagreements over funding for the Secret Service. The chamber is almost certain to leave Washington for its August recess without a Homeland Appropriations bill out of committee.

The California-based iNewSource describes disturbing Border Patrol body-worn camera footage of the March death of Guatemalan migrant Petronila Elizabeth Poma Perez, who fell from the border wall near San Diego after hanging and crying for help for over 20 minutes while agents awaited backup. The article points to a lack of coordination between Border Patrol agents and local fire department personnel.

NewsNation reported that Border Patrol has built a layer of secondary border fencing in its El Centro, California sector in order to “try and stop the flow of fentanyl.”

Analyses and Feature Stories

Though Panama’s new president, José Raúl Mulino, has used barbed wire to block at least five paths in the Darién Gap, “I can say that Mulino’s plan has little chance of succeeding,” wrote Thomson Reuters correspondent Anastasia Moloney, who has walked the Colombian side of the dangerous route traversed by more than half a million migrants last year. “When there’s a crackdown on migrant routes, smugglers respond by raising their fees.”

A brief from the Women’s Refugee Commission lays out several recommendations to promote orderly and safe migration throughout the Americas, including more legal migration pathways including an improved Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela parole program; improving the Safe Mobility Initiative currently active in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala; working with civil society to implement commitments in the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration; support for Mexico’s asylum system and migrant shelters, and supporting deported non-Mexican migrants’ integration in Mexico.

Reporting from Ciudad Juárez, NPR’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán talked to asylum seekers who have been trying for as many as nine months to secure one of 200 daily CBP One appointments at an El Paso port of entry.

CBS News visited El Paso’s Annunciation House migrant shelter, which has been the subject of a legal assault from the Texas state attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), who claims that it is a “stash house” for undocumented people. In early July a state judge blocked Paxton’s effort to demand that the shelter provide documents, but Paxton is appealing that decision to Texas’s State Supreme Court.

Cronkite News looked at the legal hurdles that would remain if Arizona voters approve Proposition 314, which would make it a state crime to cross the border without federal inspection. The Biden administration Justice Department is already challenging a similar Texas law, S.B. 4, which remains on hold pending appeals.

On the Right