I'm Steven Potter.

>> It's clear immigration is the hot button issue for Republicans, as Donald Trump has proposed increasingly drastic plans to deport undocumented migrants.

Kamala Harris has proposed reviving a bipartisan border bill, which would add more immigration officers and judges.

The question is which plan are voters drawn to?

Here and now?

Reporter Nathan Denzin has more.

>> Please rise for our national anthem.

Republicans are ramping up attacks on Democratic immigration policies as Election Day draws closer.

>> If you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.

Anybody would know this.

>> Over 8.5 million people have been encountered at the southern border since 2021, about 6 million more than during the Trump administration.

Republicans say those immigrants are taking jobs, committing crime and bringing illicit drugs into the country.

A point Trump underscored at a campaign stop in Prairie du Chien.

>> They make our criminals look like babies.

These are stone cold killers.

They walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat.

These people are animals.

Now they'll say, oh, that's a terrible thing for him to say.

No, no, these people are animals.

Not only to people at the border, but to immigrants that are already here.

>> Representative Chris Sinicki represents South Milwaukee in the state Assembly, and is also the party chair for the Milwaukee County Democrats.

>> When I watch the news and I see these families, these these mothers with their children walking hundreds of miles to get to the border, they're doing it for a reason.

>> The lives of people in many countries, like Venezuela, Nicaragua.

Their lives have become almost intolerable.

>> Benjamin Marquez is a political scientist at UW-Madison with a focus on immigration and Latino populations.

has always reacted very negatively to large numbers of immigrants coming to the United States.

point now where you're walking down the street and you see people say, oh, you know, he's got brown skin.

I don't trust this man.

color.

The threat is seen as as more intense, as more consequential for the for the fate of the nation.

>> That became particularly clear when Donald Trump falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, during the presidential debate.

the people that live there.

>> Even though these accusations have no basis in fact, it it it flies politically.

hear directly from American citizens about the concerns that they might have.

Not whether it's true or not.

>> Hilario Deleon is the party chair for the Milwaukee County Republicans.

He says concerns over immigration come up frequently when he is out in the community.

people are just making up or they're just, you know what?

I'm just going to roll out of bed and I'm going to just go out there and just blast this entire group of people that are coming in.

>> Polls have shown that Republicans are likely to be much more concerned about immigration than Democrats.

Deleon says he's heard concerns in Milwaukee that undocumented people are receiving help before local neighborhoods.

>> These are people who live in these neighborhoods that feel like that they're being forgotten.

They feel like that their voices aren't being heard and they're being pushed aside.

>> He says concerns include illegal drugs like fentanyl coming in through the southern border and undocumented people committing crime.

But data has shown that most smuggled drugs, including fentanyl, are brought by American citizens through official ports of entry in their vehicles versus by migrants crossing the border.

Undocumented migrants are also much less likely to commit crime or end up in jail than natural U.S. Citizens.

>> They are not going to go out and commit serious crimes because they are hoping to become legal citizens.

If they commit these serious crimes, they cannot become a citizen of the United States.

>> We're already dealing with enough crime as it is with the general population.

A general citizen population here.

Why would we want to add more crime onto that problem already?

>> The Trump plan, if elected, hinges on a policy of mass deportation for the roughly 11 million undocumented migrants in America, the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.

>> I don't think many people have given serious thought to what it would take to deport 11 million people.

deported, Marquez says.

Industries around the country would be hurt.

>> I mean, who's going to process meat in this country?

Who's who's going to work the dairy farms?

>> Studies have found that immigrants often make up more than three quarters of labor on dairy farms.

the jobs that most people don't want to do.

They're they're working in the fields.

They're working in the kitchens, they're cleaning, you know, cleaning up manure.

>> There's all these American citizens here that could use a job.

farm.

I wouldn't I wouldn't last a couple days.

>> Odrcic Dav.

Rohn Odrcic is an immigration attorney who works on asylum cases.

He says Republican rhetoric has been an issue for some time.

>> I'm seeing on one side this intense hate.

I don't know how else to put it.

>> But he also says he hasn't seen much action taken by Democrats.

electoral lens of we need to get people excited.

administration rule that would allow noncitizen spouses and children to stay in America.

That policy was implemented in late August.

>> My question is to the Democrats is why did you enact this in the summer of an election year?

Why wasn't this enacted within the first week of your administration?

>> He says there's a fundamental misunderstanding about how our border and asylum process work, which leads to unproductive political debates.

truly realize that, that how difficult it is to be granted asylum in order to be granted asylum, you have to prove to a judge your situation fits a very narrow definition of why you country.

>> In the interim, federal law allows asylum seekers a temporary status to remain in the U.S.

But even scheduling an appointment with a judge takes years.

>> Earlier this week, I was at the Chicago Asylum office for an interview.

That application was filed in April of 2016, so eight and a half years in January.

>> A bipartisan border bill proposed adding 4300 asylum officers and 100 immigration judges to ease waits.

But Trump came out in opposition to the bill and it was never passed into law.

for that bill.

It was so bad.

>> The problem is that you're looking at the numbers versus the resources that aren't keeping up with the demand.

>> On her campaign website, Vice President Kamala Harris says she would bring back this bill if elected.

She also recently signaled support for keeping even tougher asylum laws enacted by President Biden in June.

Since then, encounters have decreased by about 55%.

>> Democrats cannot afford to be branded as advocating an open border.

Just come on in and you're and you're and you're home free.

>> Only time will tell which plan voters prefer and if the plan voters prefer and if the