There has been a vigorous debate in the media over the last week about whether Vice President Kamala Harris was the “border czar.” More important than her title, Harris failed to address the causes of migration from Central America while spouting empty rhetoric.
This public posturing was seen in Harris’s visit to El Paso in 2021, her only visit to the border. This trip came only after Lester Holt challenged her by stating that she had not been to the border yet despite handling migration. Harris replied by saying it wasn’t important whether she had visited. She continued, “And I haven’t been to Europe.” Beyond this, El Paso was not seeing significant illegal border crossings compared to other areas on the southern border at that time.
Her main concern as “border czar” was to fix the alleged “root cause” of immigration from Central America. To explain her strategy, she said, “There is no question, and I said this from the very beginning, that our approach to this issue has to be with a commitment to a long-term investment and it has to be a commitment to consistency. The United States has to be consistent.”
She continued, “So, I am committed to ensuring that we engage in an active way on the root causes, on addressing the cause and effect, and also being partners in the Western Hemisphere, understanding that we have a responsibility and if we ignore that responsibility it will visit itself upon us in a very domestic way.”
What are these root causes? Harris’s diagnosis included progressive concerns, such as “the lack of opportunity for indigenous people, Afro-descendants, women,” and “the challenges that that country has faced because of extreme climate conditions.”
As can be expected by her vague rhetoric and progressive buzzwords, her plan in practice has not been effective. The little concrete support that has been provided to countries in Central America has had only a limited effect. Over 4 million migrants have arrived in the United States from Central America during the Biden administration, dwarfing the 1.8 million that came during the Trump presidency.
While Harris’s focus on Central America has failed to prevent people from leaving those countries, she simultaneously paid little attention to the border itself. Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott has said that Harris failed to have a single meaningful conversation with him about border security. Scott continued, “When we tried to basically push our professional perspective unsolicited, it was met with just complete hostility.”
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The Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis has been a disaster. Millions of illegal immigrants have entered the country. Deadly drugs like fentanyl are also entering the country through the southern border, fueling a drug epidemic that is killing over 100,000 Americans every year.
Harris has been intimately involved in the White House’s efforts to handle migration and the border. She has to share in the blame for Biden’s catastrophic mishandling of the mass migration at the southern border.