At a Sunday rally in Las Vegas, Vice President Kamala Harris accused former President Donald Trump of fanning “flames of fear” around immigration, warned of the dangers of a Trump second term, and urged people to make a voting plan ahead of the election.

Harris’ campaign stop at the World Market Center in downtown Las Vegas came roughly two weeks after Trump held a rally at the same location.

Trump used his speech at the World Market Center to stoke fears about immigrants, adding to a laundry list of anti-immigrant remarks, which include spreading lies about the Haitian community in Ohio.

“He continues to fan the flames of fear and division,” Harris said on Sunday. 

Voters have ranked immigration as a top issue in this election. Recent polling by UnidosUS, which surveyed Latinos in Nevada and other battleground states, showed immigration reform and border security among top priorities, with voters favoring policies that provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Harris said tackling the complexities of immigration is serious and “you know Donald Trump won’t solve it.”

Trump has also promised mass deportation if elected to a second term. 

“When he was president, he did nothing to fix our immigration system,” she said.

Harris also pointed to earlier this year when Congress was working on a bipartisan deal around immigration, which among other things would have given President Joe Biden the authority to shut down any asylum requests.

She said Trump “tanked the bill” because he thought it would hurt his campaign. The bill died after Trump came out against it.

“We must have comprehensive immigration reform, strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship,” Harris said.

Harris said there are hard-working immigrants who have “been here for years, including our Dreamers,” referring to immigrants who arrived in the United States with their families when they were children.

This was Harris’ second visit to Nevada since replacing Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate and the first since her debate with Trump earlier this month.

The rally came a few days from the anniversary of the 2017 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

“What happened on 1 October proves that smart gun safety is just common sense,” she said. 

Harris used the event to connect Trump to Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a 900-page proposal that sets forth a sweeping conservative agenda if Trump is elected.

“It is a detailed and dangerous blueprint for what he will do if elected again as president,” Harris said. 

She also pushed back against his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump attempted to repeal the law during his presidency. He has not provided any details on what health care policy he would put in its place.

During the debate with Harris, he told moderators he had “concepts of a plan.”

“We can laugh at many things but the consequences of this are quite serious,” Harris said Sunday.

Since her August rally, Harris has rolled out more economic proposals around addressing the housing crisis, which include building 300,000 units nationwide.

On Sunday she also talked about what she deemed “an opportunity economy” that calls for $25,000 in down payment assistance for homebuyers and small businesses, a $50,000 tax break, and $6,000 for new parents during the first year of their child’s life.

The Harris campaign said 7,500 people attended, compared to the estimated 6,000 the Trump campaign said attended during his visit Sept. 13.

Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favor either candidate.

Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s swing takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.

On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.

At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.

Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.

In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.

In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.

Democrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.

Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.

The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.

Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.

“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.

Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is set to rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as both she and Republican Donald Trump continue to make frequent trips to Nevada, looking to gain momentum in the swing state as Election Day nears.

The rally is part of Harris’ latest West Coast swing, which included making her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking over for President Joe Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket. On Friday, the vice president walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities.

She attended a San Francisco fundraiser Saturday and had plans for a Sunday event in Los Angeles before heading to Nevada, with a return to Washington set for Monday night.

“This race is as close as it could possibly be,” she said Saturday to a raucous crowd of donors. “This is a margin-of-error race.”

Harris said even if there is enthusiasm, she’s running like an underdog. And she invited people to “join our team in battleground states” to help get voters to the polls — even if it’s Californians making calls from home.

All voters in Nevada automatically receive ballots by mail unless they opt out — a pandemic-era change that was set in state law. That means most ballots could start going out in a matter of weeks, well before Election Day on Nov. 5.

Harris plans to be back in Las Vegas on Oct. 10 for a town hall with Hispanic voters. Both she and Republican rival Donald Trump have campaigned frequently in the city, highlighting the critical role that Nevada, and its mere six votes in the Electoral College, could play in deciding an election expected to be exceedingly close.

Trump held his own Las Vegas rally on Sept. 13 at the Expo World Market Center, where Harris is speaking Sunday. Her campaign has frequently scheduled events in the same venue where her opponent previously spoke, including in Milwaukee, Atlanta and suburban Phoenix. During his Las Vegas event, the former president singled out people crossing into the U.S. illegally, saying Harris “would be the president of invasion.”

During a campaign stop in the city in June, Trump promised to eliminate taxes on tips received by waiters, hotel workers and thousands of other service industry employees. Harris used her own Las Vegas rally in August to make the same promise.

Fully doing away with federal taxes on tips would probably require an act of Congress. Still, Nevada’s Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and Reno, has endorsed Harris.

Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, said the difference between the dueling no-taxes-on-tips proposals is that Harris has also pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage,” where employers pay service industry workers small salaries and meet minimum wage thresholds by expecting employees to supplement those with tips.

“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.

Harris has no public schedule on Tuesday, when her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, squares off against Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance for the first and only vice presidential debate of the campaign. But Harris and Walz will campaign jointly on Wednesday, making a bus tour with various stops through central Pennsylvania.

The campaign says that during that swing, both will emphasize plans to energize U.S. manufacturing, including by using tax credits to encourage steel production and overhaul federal permitting systems to increase American construction.