Donald Trump’s first television ad targeting Kamala Harris zeroes in on what his campaign views as her greatest vulnerability: immigration. The ad opens with a narrator calling Harris “America’s border tsar” while showing footage of the vice-president dancing, accompanied by the claim, “and she’s failed us.”

The ad presents a series of statistics, including 10 million illegal border crossings and 250,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths, which the Trump campaign attributes to Harris’s handling of the border crisis—a role assigned to her by President Joe Biden shortly after his inauguration. The ad concludes with the stark message: “Kamala Harris: failed, weak, dangerously liberal.”

In response, the Harris campaign dismissed the ad as a collection of “trademark lies” from the former president.

It’s no surprise that the Trump campaign’s initial major attack on Harris focuses on her role as the so-called “failed border tsar,” blaming her for the surge in undocumented immigrants at the southern border. Polls show that immigration remains a top concern for Americans, a factor likely to influence their votes in the upcoming presidential election.

Since the release of this ad, Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have consistently labeled Harris the “failed border tsar,” using images of people crossing the Rio Grande or slipping under razor wire to underscore their point. Critics argue that Harris should have done more to address the issue during her tenure.

However, the term “border tsar” is disputed. Allies and former officials who worked with Harris maintain that she was never responsible for policing the border directly. Ricardo Zuniga, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, clarified, “It was never that position. She knew from the beginning, as did the entire US government, that it was about tackling migration at its source.”