Just months into his administration, Joe Biden turned to his vice president for assistance in resolving a seemingly intractable issue: migration, which was exacerbated by a border crisis.
The political assignment appeared to be hopeless. It didn’t take long for Vice President Kamala Harris and her team to clarify that she wasn’t responsible for overseeing the southern border.
Even now, three years later, that burden continues to hang over Harris’ historic presidential campaign, as Republicans exploit it as a weapon in their assault.
While falsely claiming that Harris had been appointed Biden’s “border czar,” former president Donald Trump said in a rare call with reporters on Tuesday that the largest invasion in history is now taking place at our southern border, and it’s getting worse, not better, due to her dangerously extreme immigration policies.
After being a political liability for Biden, Trump has made the US-Mexico border a central tenet of his campaign, so it will now follow Harris.
The administration’s immigration record over the past three years has been defined by an unprecedented number of border crossings; as a result, the White House recently took aggressive measures to substantially limit asylum at the US southern border.
It has been bundled with the administration’s larger migration issues, but according to sources, the vice president’s team has already seen success in Central America thanks to large private-sector investment. This comes as the vice president’s campaign is taking shape, and voters continue to rank immigration as a top issue.
Border security was absent from Harris’s first campaign event for president in 2024, which took place on Tuesday. While the topic has been noticeably absent from campaign rallies for the past twelve months, Biden and Harris have lately used the bipartisan immigration compromise that Trump ruined to demonstrate that Republicans aren’t committed to securing the border.
An AWN-obtained letter shows that the House GOP’s political arm is urging lawmakers to concentrate on what it calls Harris’ failing border policy.
The presidential campaign of Harris’s spokesman, Kevin Munoz, issued a statement in which he condemned Trump’s immigration policy as “xenophobic” and placed the blame for the border crisis on Trump.
Taking xenophobic signs to the Republican National Convention and separating moms from their children are “the only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border,” Munoz added. Trump has made it clear that he is only interested in advancing his own agenda, and as a result, he vetoed the most bipartisan agreement on border security in a century. Regardless of his fabrications, the reality is that Vice President Harris is the sole contender in this election who would advocate for concrete measures to strengthen the protection of our country’s borders.
As of March 2021, Harris has been working on the root causes. Since Biden had previously served in a similar capacity under Obama, he saw the delegation of responsibility for coordinating diplomatic efforts in Central America as a mark of respect. This came at a time when there was a surge of unaccompanied minors.
Homeland Security continued to be in charge of border security while Harris concentrated on long-term solutions.
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were the most common countries of origin for children detained at the southern US border at the time. These countries have been heavily impacted by hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic, and have been a key migrant route for the past decade.
The situation confronting the administration worsened as the team headed by the vice president started formulating strategies. Migrants from even farther afield in South America, who were not part of Harris’s designated portfolio, were the ones who eventually overwhelmed the Biden administration seven months later.
Republicans began pointing fingers at Harris, calling her the “border czar,” in response to the spike in border crossings; the White House, however, rejected the label, claiming that Harris’s focus was on the region rather than border security. In 2022, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott insulted Harris by starting to transport migrants to her home at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, via bus.
House Republicans’ attempts to portray Harris as a border czar were criticized by California Democrat Pete Aguilar as “laughable and unserious” on Tuesday.
First things first: the term “border czar” does not exist. In an interview with reporters, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus explained that Latin American countries should have multilateral discussions with Kamala Harris.
As the situation at the US-Mexico border became a political weakness for Biden, Harris has only sporadically mentioned her efforts.
Republicans will most certainly utilize her early remarks in the coming months.
Nearly five months after becoming president, in June 2021, Harris was asked by NBC’s Lester Holt why she had not yet visited the US-Mexico border during an interview.
There will come a time when we must go to the border, the vice president declared. “The border has been visited by us. Thus, the entire… border issue. The border has been visited. We’ve crossed into enemy territory.
“You haven’t been to the border,” Holt retorted.
Plus, I still haven’t set foot in Europe. And I don’t — I don’t get what you’re trying to say,” Harris explained while laughing. When asked about the border, she said, “I’m not discounting its importance.”
The border was visited by Harris later that month.
