With her recent support for tougher border enforcement, Vice President Kamala Harris is borrowing from a familiar playbook: her own.

Harris’ vow to fight for border security has roots in her run for California attorney general in 2010, when she barely defeated a Republican opponent who had support across the state from police chiefs and prosecutors.

Harris, a former prosecutor herself, decided to embrace a crackdown on the transnational gangs that smuggle drugs and people across the U.S.-Mexico border. She expanded a task force devoted to cross-border criminality — during the Great Recession, when the state was cutting its budget and eliminating programs — and fostered greater intelligence sharing with Mexican authorities that officials said yielded arrests years later.