Politicians refer to Harris as a failing “border czar.” The reality is more nuanced

Vice President Kamala Harris encountered the severity of the issue immediately upon taking office in 2021, when she was assigned to address the underlying causes of migration from Central America due to an increase in unlawful border crossings.

She had no authority over the border, the area is rife with dishonest public servants, and social and economic inequity are the primary causes of migration.

According to U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and the author of a bipartisan border security bill that was unveiled earlier this year, “she was given a very hard, difficult, convoluted portfolio.”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has stepped up his criticism of Harris as a failing “border czar” at rallies and on social media, especially in light of the fact that Harris is now the front-runner for the Democratic nomination following the conclusion of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign last month.

Despite Harris’s best efforts, federal data shows that under Biden, the number of illegal migrants caught at the U.S.-Mexico border has risen to an all-time high of 7 million, which has infuriated Republicans.

Interviews with three current Biden officials, thirteen former officials, and others following the matter reveal that Harris’s actual record on migration is significantly more nuanced.

First, according to Alan Bersin, who accepted the title as a special representative for border issues under Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Harris was never assigned the border czar position. “This was not the job assigned to VP Harris,” he stated.

Rather, Biden urged Harris to spearhead diplomatic initiatives to combat poverty, violence, and corruption in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—the Northern Triangle countries of Central America—as well as to coordinate efforts with Mexico on the matter.

It was comparable to Vice President Joe Biden’s previous position.

But Murphy argued that was a quest with too much scope.

“It’s hard in a short period of time to come up with a strategy that impacts the very real and complicated psychological decision-making that people in those countries go through when they’re deciding to come to the United States,” Murphy told me via telephone.

Furthermore, numerous former officials and outside experts claimed that within months of Harris taking office, the emphasis on the three Central American nations was out of pace with the reality at the border, where illegal immigration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela was surging.

Roberta Jacobson, a coordinator for the U.S.-Mexico border during the early months of the Biden administration, noted that “she started off, in a sense, at a disadvantage because everyone was focusing on those three countries in the Northern Triangle.” “Meanwhile, the migrant population was changing dramatically.”

Despite her increased attention to abortion rights this year—a major Democratic topic after the national right to an abortion was struck down by a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision—Harris remained the leader of the Central America campaign.

According to the White House, Harris was instrumental in securing $5.2 billion in private investment and $4 billion in government assistance for the creation or maintenance of about 250,000 employment in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in March.

In 2021, Nespresso began purchasing coffee from Honduras and El Salvador. Gap Inc. reported that it has increased yarn production in Guatemala and given women in Guatemala and Honduras access to skill-building programs, and that it is on track to fulfill its commitment to invest $150 million by 2025 in regional textile sourcing.

The $37 billion in remittances that migrants from the three nations they work in the United States bring home annually dwarfs the amount of aid and private sector investment provided by the United States, according to Ricardo Barrientos, director of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies think tank.

“It’s very small compared to the magnitude of the challenge,” he stated. “Or some would say, ‘too little, too late.'”

The number of Northern Triangle migrants apprehended for illegal immigration dropped from a peak of 90,000 in July 2021 to 25,000 by May, while experts are unsure of the exact effect of Harris’s efforts.

“BORDER CZAR”

Harris traveled to Guatemala in June 2021 and Honduras in January 2022, both in Central America. That was one less than Biden, who traveled to Guatemala three times after being given a comparable position in 2014.

Republicans, however, started linking Harris to an increase in unauthorized border crossings and urged her to go to the border. In June 2021, she made her first and only trip to El Paso, Texas, the site of U.S. border operations, where she also made her portfolio defense.

“We have to deal with the causes and the effects, that’s the reality,” she said to reporters at the airport.

According to her office at the time, Harris spoke with a group of girls and toured a migrant processing center during the six-hour visit. However, pool reports state that she did not do the standard walking tour of the border wall that Trump officials did.

Despite holding a lower status during that administration, Raul Ortiz, the chief of the Border Patrol from 2021 to 2023, claimed he never communicated with Biden or Harris, though he did meet with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on multiple occasions.

“I would have liked to have had an opportunity to discuss some of the issues and some of the recommended changes that I thought we should have implemented,” Ortiz stated.

Although Ortiz denied receiving an invitation, the White House said in March that he was invited to join Biden in El Paso the previous year and did not go.

ASSSET OR LIABILITY

According to a June Reuters/Ipsos poll, voters in the United States prioritize immigration over the economy and extremism, with 44% of respondents favoring Trump’s immigration policy over Biden’s.

In a July 25 attack ad, the Trump team painted Harris as a liberal who supported “open borders” and was lenient toward crime. The commercial emphasized remarks made by Harris years ago that the United States should “probably think about starting from scratch” when it comes to immigration enforcement and that those who enter the country illegally shouldn’t be treated as criminals.

At a rally last week in North Carolina, Trump declared, “If border czar Harris stays in charge, every week will bring a never-ending stream of illegal alien rapists, bloodthirsty killers and child predators to go after our sons and our daughters.”

In a statement to Reuters, the Harris campaign aligned its messaging with that of Biden, portraying Trump as an extremist whose administration split up thousands of immigrant families and contributed to the failure of the bipartisan border security bill in the U.S. Senate.

Campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz stated in a statement, “There is only one candidate in this race who will fight for real solutions to help secure our nation’s border: Vice President Harris.”

Given that Harris is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, some proponents of immigration believe she would have a greater understanding of the humanitarian aspect of the problem.

According to two persons familiar with the situation, Harris played a key role in the Biden administration’s June launch of a program that offers undocumented immigrants who marry US citizens a route to citizenship.

Despite the fact that immigration was not specifically under Harris’ purview, Daniel Suvor, who served as California Attorney General from 2014 to 2017, cited her attempts to organize legal counsel for unaccompanied immigrant children.

According to Suvor, she decided to educate herself on the application procedure for special visas intended for victims of abuse. She then joined forces with Brad Smith, who was Microsoft’s chief counsel at the time and a co-founder of Kids in Need of Defense, and they began contacting law firms.