Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race with immigration and border security as top issues for voters, but has struggled to gain momentum on the issue given her past radical policies as a California senator and her role in the Biden administration’s failure to contain the crisis from the southern border.

The Fox News Voter Analysis found that 52 percent of voters said President-elect Donald Trump was the best candidate to handle immigration, while only 36 percent said Harris.

Meanwhile, it was one of the top issues for voters, with 20 percent saying it was the most important issue facing the country, behind only the economy and jobs (39 percent) and ahead of abortion (11 percent) and climate change (7%)

‘LIBERATION DAY’: WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP ON BORDER SECURITY, IMMIGRATION

Border Patrol picks up a group of asylum seekers from an aid camp at the US-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona, US, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. (Justin Hamel/Getty Images)

The roots of Harris’ problems with immigration started in 2021when the Biden-Harris administration rolled back Trump-era policies, including the construction of the border wall and the stay-in-Mexico policy, and sought to institute a moratorium on deportations.

This was followed by a dramatic and historic surge at the border that overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and broke records for encounters, leading to chaos across the country as immigrants poured in. , proposing a comprehensive immigration bill that included a mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, but Republicans and others have linked the increase to administration policies,.

As those numbers mounted, President Biden in March 2021 tasked Harris with leading diplomacy in countries south of the border to address what he saw as the root causes of migration — including climate change, violence and poverty . Crucially, this led her to be dubbed the “frontier czar” by critics and the media, although the White House rejected the moniker.

Despite the limitations of that role, it made her a spiraling crisis figure and she immediately faced pressure to visit the southern border. She visited Mexico and Guatemala, but initially declined calls to visit the border.

“You weren’t at the border,” he told NBC’s Lester Holt after he claimed he was at the border.

“And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris joked.

WHY NOW? MEDIA PUBLIC MASSIVELY QUIET AS KAMALA HARRIS’S ‘BORDER WAGON’ LABEL BRUTALLY CLAIMED

The Washington Post will not endorse former President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. (Getty Images)

She eventually visited El Paso, Texas, but the controversy remained, and Republicans regularly mentioned the “frontier czar” when attacking the administration’s policies. There were also reports that she was unhappy with the pregnancy.

In this role, she will continue to raise more than $5.2 billion committed since May 2021 from more than 50 companies and organizations to address the root causes, but the ongoing crisis, which has not slowed until 2024, has been in the center of attention.

This year, she and the administration threw their weight behind a bipartisan border security bill that was introduced in the Senate in January. That bill, which failed to garner enough support to pass the chamber, would have provided additional funding to the border, including for thousands of additional personnel.

It also included emergency authority to allow officials to close entry at the southern border when they reach a certain level — but conservatives say that would reinforce high levels of illegal immigration.

But Trump’s opposition to the bill allowed Harris to accuse Trump of torpedoing it for political purposes.

LIVE BLOG: DONALD TRUMP ELECTED AS THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Vice President Kamala Harris gestures as she delivers a concession speech for the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough) ((AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

“Donald Trump found out about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to solve a problem instead of solving a problem,” she said. She also noted a recent drop in the passage of of the June border after President Biden signed a proclamation limiting asylum entries into NE

“(Trump) can make up all the lies he wants, but the truth is there is only one candidate in this race who will fight for real solutions to help secure our nation’s border, and that’s Vice President Harris,” her campaign said.

As a presidential candidate, she also highlighted her past as attorney general pursuing transnational criminal organizations “smuggling weapons, drugs and human beings across the US-Mexico border.”

But she was also hit by her previous statements made while a senator from California and a presidential candidate in the 2020 election cycle. Her support for gender transition surgery detained migrants made headlines and was used as a weapon against her by Republicans.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS

She would also depart from past statements calling for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings and the closing of immigration detention centers. She also thought ICE was starting “from scratch” again.

A Harris campaign adviser told Fox that her positions were “shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris administration.”

In the end, however, it was not enough to help it overcome its deficit on the issue with Trump, who on Wednesday reiterated his calls to secure the border.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

He has pledged to resume construction of the wall and launch a mass deportation drive while ending some Biden-era policies when he takes office in January 2025.