“Together, CHC, we must also reform our broken immigration system and protect our DREAMers, and understand we can do both,” Harris said. “Create an earned pathway to citizenship and ensure our border is secure. We can do both. And we must do both.”

The vice president’s comments show how she is walking a fine line between supporting stronger protections at the U.S. southern border to stem the migrant crisis while also appealing to the Democratic base’s support for a citizenship path for young people who entered the nation illegally.

During her first presidential run in 2020, Harris voiced support for limiting separation but has now said she would pass congressional legislation that would enact stronger protections at the border while running in 2024.

The Hispanic Caucus’s annual conference comes just three days after the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month and as Harris is hoping to shore up support among Latino voters in the presidential battle against former President Donald Trump.

The remarks to the conference largely followed Harris’s stump speech but with direct mention of the work that the Hispanic Caucus has done to implement wins for the American public.

As Harris touched on immigration, she took a moment to slam Trump’s previous actions of separating migrant families at the southern border while serving in office.

“And while we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward,” Harris warned.

“We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history,” she continued. “Imagine what that would look like and what that would be. How is that going to happen? Massive raids, massive detention camps. What are they talking about?

While running for president a third time, Trump has touted enacting a deportation program while campaigning. During a press conference last week in Los Angeles, California, Trump said: “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country.”

“And we’re going to start with Springfield, [Ohio] and Aurora, [Colorado],” he emphasized, referring to the false claims that Haitian migrants are eating pet animals.

Immigration remains one of the top issues this election cycle, along with the economy, crime and safety, and abortion rights.

In a recent Scripps News/Ipsos survey, 54% of respondents said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support “the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants” while 68% supported giving DREAMers a pathway to citizenship.