The interview was controversial from the start.

On Wednesday, United States Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with conservative-leaning Fox News as her campaign tries to attract voters disillusioned with her Republican rival Donald Trump.

But moderator Bret Baier wasted no time in focusing on the focus of their discussion: immigration.

He confronted her with a Trump campaign ad and a video of a grieving mother testifying before Congress about the death of her child, allegedly at the hands of two undocumented immigrants.

But Harris pointed out that irregular immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border had been a problem long before she was elected vice president in 2021 — even under Trump, a former president.

“I honestly think this ad from the Trump campaign is a bit like throwing stones when you live in a glass house,” Harris responded to the Trump ad. “You must take responsibility for what happened in your administration.”

Immigration is a top issue

A Pew Research Center poll last week found that U.S. voters rank the economy as their most important issue when they go to the polls on November 5th.

But rounding out the top five voter issues was immigration, rated “extremely important” by 41 percent of respondents and “very important” by another 31 percent.

Immigration has been a key plank in both the Democratic and Republican parties’ platforms, with both sides pledging to reduce illegal border crossings.

But the Pew poll found that Trump appears to be ahead on the issue, with 54 percent of respondents saying he is best able to handle the country’s immigration policy.

That’s an advantage Republicans have been trying to exploit as the presidential race comes to a close in less than three weeks.

Nevertheless, Trump and Harris are almost neck-and-neck in overall nationwide voter polls. Polling aggregator 270toWin found that Harris has a slight lead, averaging 49.5 percent, over Trump’s 47.3 percent.

As she tries to move forward, Harris’ campaign has appealed to both centrist voters and Republicans fed up with Trump’s leadership of the party.

Part of their strategy was to play up the support of prominent Republicans such as former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, a vocal critic of Trump on Capitol Hill.

She has also promised to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet if she is elected president.

Earlier Wednesday, for example, that strategy was on clear display in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Harris touted the bipartisan nature of her campaign as the antithesis of what she described as Trump’s drive to divide.

“Today I am joined by over 100 Republican leaders from across Pennsylvania and our country in supporting my candidacy for President of the United States,” she said to cheers from the crowd. “And I am deeply honored to have their support.”

Hot interview

But her reception was much cooler in the Fox News studio, where Baier touted her track record on immigration.

His opening question got to the heart of his interview: “How many illegal immigrants do you think your government has released into the country in the last three and a half years?”

Outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration, under which Harris serves, has repeatedly come under fire for being responsible for a rise in irregular border crossings.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for example, recorded a record 2,475,669 “encounters” along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, although its most recent statistics signal a significant decline in border crossings.

Still, Biden has taken action to limit asylum access to those who cross the border without authorization.

“Bret, let’s just get to the point,” Harris replied as she and Baier struggled to talk over each other. “The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be fixed.”

She accused Trump of defeating a bipartisan immigration bill in January that would have marked the first comprehensive reform on the issue in decades.

“You want a president of the United States who won’t play political games with the problem but will actually focus on solving it,” Harris said.

She also touted her track record as a “former attorney general of a border state” in prosecuting “drug, weapons and human trafficking.”

But Baier stood firm with Harris about the high number of border crossings under the Biden administration — and the crimes he claimed were a result of them.

Studies have consistently found that undocumented immigrants commit fewer violent crimes than U.S.-born citizens. But members of the US right, particularly Trump and his vice president JD Vance, have amplified unfounded fears that migrants pose a widespread threat to public safety.

Baier also made a similar argument. “Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, these are young women who were brutally attacked and killed,” Baier said, suggesting that immigration policy was to blame. “Do you owe these families an apology?”

“First of all, I would like to say that these were tragic cases. “There’s no question about that,” Harris replied. “I cannot imagine the pain these victims’ families have suffered over a loss that should not have happened.”

“It is also true that if a border security law had been passed nine months ago, we would have had more border guards at the border for nine months.”

Distancing yourself from Biden

Baier also confronted Harris with criticism that her administration, if elected, would be a continuation of Biden’s.

He noted that Harris suggested on the talk show “The View” last week that she was in step with the outgoing president. When a panelist on The View asked her if she would have done anything differently than Biden, Harris replied, “I can’t think of anything.”

Harris answered Baier clearly.

“Let me be very clear. “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she said. “And like every new president who takes office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leaders.”

Harris, 59, spent much of her career as a prosecutor before becoming San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and California attorney general in 2011.

She first came to Washington, DC in 2017 to serve as a U.S. senator, but left early to become vice president. During Wednesday’s interview, she tried to use this relatively brief experience to her advantage.

“I, for example, am someone who hasn’t spent most of my career in Washington, DC. I invite ideas, whether from the Republicans who support me, who were on stage with me just a few minutes ago, or from business and others who can contribute to the decisions I make,” she said.

Baier himself was criticized after the interview. A former Harris aide, Symone Sanders Townsend, subsequently condemned his style of questioning on social media.

“The interviewer was not himself,” she wrote. “Instead, he was rude, misleading, and lifted the questions straight from a proverbial Trump/Vance press release.”