Now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential race, the role she’s played in the ongoing border crisis is in the spotlight. The Biden/Harris administration has reeled from one crisis to another at the Southwest border, creating an electoral vulnerability for the soon-to-be crowned candidate. Harris-friendly “fact checkers”, however, are now scrambling to distance the new candidate from the administration’s old failures, claiming her role in the administration’s immigration effort was limited to addressing the “root causes” of illegal migration. Here’s a quick timeline, which likely isn’t going to do much to settle the issue of what Vice President Harris did on immigration, and when she did it.
Biden Taps Harris for a New Role. On March 24, 2021 — just over two months after the inauguration — Biden and Harris held a joint public event at the White House, during which Biden explained Harris’ new immigration duties:
I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.
And, you know, back when I was Vice President, I got a similar assignment, but one of the things we did was we made sure that we got a bipartisan agreement with Democrats and Republicans to provide over $700 million to the countries in the Northern Triangle to determine the best way to keep people from coming is keep them from wanting to leave.
And the reason why so many people were leaving, we learned, was that not only gang violence and trafficking and cartels, but natural disasters, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes.
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And so, this increase [in migrants] has been consequential, but the Vice President has agreed ... to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders.
Harris graciously accepted these new responsibilities, responding:
As the President has said, there are many factors that lead precedent [sic] to leave these countries. And while we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law and that we also — because we can chew gum and walk at the same time — must address the root causes that — that cause people to make the trek, as the President has described, to come here.
And I look forward to engaging in diplomacy with government, with private sector, with civil society, and — and the leaders of each in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to strengthen democracy and the rule of law, and ensure shared prosperity in the region.
Roberta Jacobson and Alejandro Mayorkas. At the time, Biden already had a de facto “border czar”, former Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson, whose official title was “the Special Assistant to the President and Coordinator for the Southwest Border at the National Security Council”.
It’s unclear when, exactly, Jacobson was named to that position, but a March 25, 2021, White House statement revealed she had traveled to Mexico to meet with officials there days earlier, in order “to develop an effective and humane plan of action to manage migration”.
She didn’t last long in the position, and when her departure from that role was announced in early April, the Washington Post explained: “Vice President Harris was recently assigned to oversee the part of Jacobson’s portfolio involving diplomatic outreach to the Central American nations that are home to most of the migrants.” (Emphasis added.)
Keep in mind that well before that joint press conference and Jacobson’s trip to Mexico, Alejandro Mayorkas had already been confirmed as DHS secretary, in a Senate vote on February 2, 2021.
I’ll return to him below, but note that Harris-friendly outlets like PolitiFact have gone to great pains in arguing that: “Biden didn’t put Harris in charge of overseeing border security. ... Managing the border ‘has always been’ the Homeland Security secretary’s role.”
Hold that thought, but at least initially it was reasonable to view both Harris and Jacobson as the White House point people on immigration and the border, that is Biden’s “border czars”.
Even at the time, however, I was quick to caveat Harris’ ascension to that role, describing her as the “new ‘border czar’ — sort of” and laying out the duties she clearly had been assigned. But as even Politico noted on March 29, 2021, “Harris’ exact role hasn’t been fully laid out publicly.”
The June 2021 Guatemala Trip and the NBC News Interview. The confusion remained, at least up to June 8, 2021, when Harris gave an interview to NBC News’ Lester Holt in Guatemala City, excerpts of which you’ll likely see throughout the campaign.
Harris began that interview by describing her trip to Guatemala and laying out the “root causes” of illegal immigration, prompting a somewhat frustrated (and confused) Holt to ask: “Why not visit the border? Why not see what Americans are seeing in this crisis?”
Here’s how it went from there:
Harris: We are going to the border. We have to deal with what’s happening at the border. There’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point. We have to understand there’s a reason that people are arriving at our border and ask, “what is that reason?”, and then identify the problem so we can fix it.
Holt: What do you tell a Guatemalan family who heard you say, “don’t come” but then, you know, they’re facing the end, there’s poverty, there’s disease, there’s all these things happening at once, you tell them, “don’t come”.
Harris: We don’t want — listen, I don’t think Americans want people to be exposed to harm if they can avoid it. They’re taking the trek from the place that they know — that they want to stay — so I’m here in Guatemala to say, “what can we do to support people and give them a sense of hope, that help is on the way”.
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Holt: Over 16,000 unaccompanied children tonight in custody. What does victory look like in this, or what does improvement look like?
Harris: Yeah, no, that is a great point and I would suggest to you that we have 12 of the biggest corporations in America who have, I convened them in my office and they have agreed to help us on this issue. Success so far has been the bringing together of community-based organizations, not only in the United States but here in Guatemala. Today that was one of my meetings, with civil-society leaders, to let them know we see them, that we understand their concerns about corruption, and we also understand their roles of leadership to help us in terms of how we prioritize our work in this region.
Holt: So, how quickly does this change what we see at the border?
Harris: I don’t know that we’re going to see, uh, listen, I’ve said from the very beginning that there’s not going to be a quick fix; we’ve seen progress. The — the — the real work is going to take time to manifest itself. Will it be worth it? Yes. Will it take some time? Yes.
The ellipsis above represents a point at which NBC News broke away from the interview to discuss the then-crisis at the border, specifically noting that Border Patrol agents had made “nearly 180,000” apprehensions that month (a then-new monthly record), including more than 18,000 “unaccompanied children” — and Guatemalan children (the leading nationality at the time) in particular.
There plainly was no “quick fix” involved in whatever Harris was doing, as total apprehensions surged above 200,000 the next month, exceeded 224,000 the following May, and neared 250,000 by December 2023. Already in the first nine months of FY 2024, agents at the Southwest border have apprehended more than 1.36 million illegal migrants.
What transpired next is an exchange you can expect the Trump administration to clip and highlight, in part, in its ads:
Holt: There’s one other topic that I want to talk to you about, before just let me quickly put a button, do you have any plans to visit the border?
Harris: I’m here in Guatemala today, at some point, uh, at some point, uh, we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border, so this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border — we’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.
Holt: You haven’t been to the border.
Harris: And, I haven’t been to Europe. I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.
Holt: But I — I mention it because Republicans have certainly come at you on this, but Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar has a border district and has said, “You and the president — come.”
Harris: Listen, I care about what’s happening at the border. I’m in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what is happening at the border, we better care about the root causes and address them, because that’s what I’m doing.
VP Harris Goes to El Paso. Harris’ taradiddle about having been to the border and subsequent rejoinder that she hasn’t “been to Europe” were a PR disaster. In response, the administration sent the vice president to El Paso, Texas, which she visited on June 25, 2021, making three brief stops in the border city.
The first was at a Border Patrol processing facility, where Harris “listened intently as Border Patrol and US Customs and Border Protection officials briefed her on improvements in processing migrants”.
The second was to the Paso Del Norte port of entry.
At that stop, “another CBP official walked her through technological improvements in screenings while showing her pictures on a poster of overcrowding at the facility in 2016” (the latter for unexplained reasons, aside from showing that President Obama had his share of border problems, too).
Finally:
before Harris left the city, she sat down with nonprofit activists and faith leaders working to help migrants, ticking through the sea-change in policy from the Trump administration and her work to address the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle countries [El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the focus of the “root causes” plan].
You’ll note that only one of those carefully planned stops was actually at the “border”, and then only technically so. The port is “on the border”, but it’s nowhere near the broad expanses between the ports at which migrants enter the United States illegally.
Even Biden-supportive CNN had to admit:
The visit produced sober, sterile images of a vice president doing a traditional border visit while avoiding any messaging stumbles akin to those on her first foreign trip — stumbles that brought the pressure on her to visit the border to a crescendo.
Friday’s visit also avoided creating any images that would tie Harris to the government’s difficulties in processing a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border in recent months.
That’s the definition of “carefully curated”, as the vice president did her best to distance her role as “Root Causes Czar” from anything then happening at the real border. It would be her only trip to El Paso or anywhere else along the 1,954-mile Southwest border to date.
Harris’ January 2022 Trip to Honduras. In late January 2022, Harris took a second trip to Central America, this time to Honduras for the inauguration of President Xiomara Castro.
The White House readout for that meeting reported the two, “discussed deepening our cooperation across a broad range of issues, including addressing the root causes of migration, combatting corruption, and expanding economic opportunity”.
It continued:
Vice President Harris emphasized that combating corruption and impunity remains at the center of our commitment to address the root causes of migration. To that end, Vice President Harris welcomed President Castro’s focus on countering corruption and impunity, including her intent to request the assistance of the United Nations in establishing an international anti-corruption commission and commitment to advancing necessary legislative reforms to enable such a commission to succeed.
I’ll explain in a later post why I included that excerpt, but for now suffice it to say that was the last trip Vice President Harris took to Central America to discuss “the root causes of migration”.
The Vice President’s June 2021 Stop in Mexico City. I should note that prior to that trip, and on her way back from Guatemala City in June 2021, Harris did stop in Mexico City to meet that country’s president. The subsequent, White House statement detailing the discussion between the vice president and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) actually adds some confusion to what, exactly, Harris’ migrant portfolio includes.
On the one hand, that statement notes:
to address root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the United States joined Mexico in a new strategic partnership to share information and strategies and co-manage new programs to foster economic opportunity through agricultural development and youth empowerment.
In the very next sentence, however, the White House states, “The two leaders also agreed to increase cooperation to further secure our borders and ensure orderly immigration.” (Emphasis added.) That followed an extensive discourse on how Harris and AMLO had discussed the “disabling” of “human trafficking and human smuggling organizations that prey on vulnerable individuals”.
That sounds like a combination of “managing the border”, which PolitiFact claims has always been Mayorkas's job and Jacobson’s old focus on “develop[ing] an effective and humane plan of action to manage migration”.
Harris now contends that back on March 24, 2021, Biden tapped her for a limited and specific task: responding to the “root causes” of irregular migration — which doesn’t include going after smugglers or “further securing our borders”. If that was Harris’ narrow lane, it doesn’t appear she kept in it.
Mayorkas’ June 14-15 Trip to Mexico City. Confusion on who in the Biden administration was supposed to handle which border issues only deepens when you consider the administration’s after-action report from meetings Mayorkas himself had in Mexico City just six days after Harris left, on his first international trip as secretary.
Among others, Mayorkas met with Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Relations Marcelo Ebrard and Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Rosa Rodríguez.
According to the DHS readout from those meetings:
Secretary Mayorkas spoke with Secretaries Ebrard and Rodríguez about the United States’ multi-prong approach to stemming irregular migration, including addressing the root causes of migration, expanding lawful pathways for migration in the region, expanding regional countries’ capacity to process asylum seekers, and overhauling border and asylum processing at the U.S. southwest border. The Secretaries also discussed the importance of multilateral engagement to address the need for regional solutions. [Emphasis added.]
Perhaps I am being picayune, but I thought that the “root causes” of migration and “the importance of multilateral engagement to address the need for regional solutions” were Harris’s responsibilities — ones she had discussed days before with AMLO — and that Mayorkas was dealing with the border itself?
Why exactly, was Mayorkas discussing those exact same topics with the Mexican government less than a week later? Mayorkas’s discussion of these issues couldn’t have been purely incidental, because they were important enough to merit inclusion in DHS’s own readout.
The Much Bigger Issues. The Harris campaign and its adjacent media outlets have gone to great pains in recent days to distance the presumptive Democratic candidate from the political fallout over the Biden/Harris administration’s immigration policies. There are four issues, however.
The first is that even if Harris’ remit involved only “root causes” and other such push factors, addressing those issues is impossible without also tackling the pull factors in this country that draw migrants here.
Short of raising every country in Central America to U.S. levels of economic opportunity, public safety, and good governance — an impossible task even in the longest of runs — those pull factors will continue to draw migrants to enter illegally.
And the paramount factor — push or pull — has been the Biden/Harris administration’s border release policies, or as federal Judge T. Kent Wetherell held in March 2023:
There were undoubtedly geopolitical and other factors that contributed to the surge of aliens at the Southwest Border, but [Biden DHS officials’] position that the crisis at the border is not largely of their own making because of their more lenient detention policies is divorced from reality and belied by the evidence.
In that context, “geopolitical and other factors” means “root causes” and Harris should have known going in that unless migrant releases stopped, all the U.S. aid and assistance in the world wouldn’t stop migrants from coming.
The second issue is that voters are blaming the crisis at the border that’s unfolded under Biden on this administration, and unless the vice president had no input into other immigration policies at all (which if true raises even more questions), she’s likely not going to be able to deflect culpability entirely.
The third — and most significant — issue is that the White House’s “root causes in Central America” approach at best responds to what was happening at the border in March 2021, not what’s been happening since.
Of the nearly 170,000 illegal migrants apprehended at the Southwest border that month, 86 percent came from Mexico or the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras.
More than 54 percent of the migrants apprehended there thus far in FY 2024, however — nearly 797,000 individuals — come from someplace else.
As noted, Harris told Lester Holt that “We have to ... ask, ‘what is that reason’” migrants are coming illegally, “and then identify the problem so we can fix it”. She plainly failed to identify the latest “problem”, which isn’t so much Mexico and the Northern Triangle as migrants from other countries.
Which brings me to the fourth factor. Instead of expanding this “root causes” approach to Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (four countries that plainly suffer from poor governance and corruption), the Biden/Harris administration instead decided to allow up to 30,000 nationals from those countries — none of whom have visas or any right to be here — to enter monthly under its CHNV parole program.
Unless Harris has no input whatsoever into White House policy — and was simply given “root causes” to make it seem she was doing something — those countries would have been ideal candidates for the program as they are all objectively relatively poor and corrupt (and Haiti is dangerous to boot).
There’s a special CHNV parole program because nationals of those four countries have accounted for nearly 1.2 million Southwest border apprehensions since October 2021. A root causes strategy focusing strictly on Mexico and Central America was obsolete as soon as it was announced — a fact Harris should have known if she’s paying any attention at all.
Kamala Harris’s border duties have never been clearly defined. Since March 2021, however, she’s done everything possible to distance herself from the administration’s migrant disaster at the Southwest border, especially now that she is the presumptive nominee. And, honestly, who can blame her?