Fox News’ Peter Doocy grilled White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday about Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent claim that she has never served as “secretary for border affairs.”
“Border minister” is the informal title widely given to Harris when President Biden appointed her to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration in 2021. Doocy pressed Jean-Pierre on why the White House was trying to distance Harris from the border crisis.
Citing Democratic talking points, Doocy argued that Harris “was never appointed to be border secretary. Such a position does not exist. It does not exist.”
“Why are Democrats so sensitive about the VP and the border,” Doocy asked. “Do you think that if there had been less migration to the border, if someone had addressed the ‘root causes’ of migration sooner, the border issue would not be as hot as it is now?”
AXIOS criticized in community note after claiming Harris was never “emperor of the borders”
Fox News’ Peter Doocy grilled White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday about her recent claim that Vice President Kamala Harris has never served as “secretary for border affairs.” (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
“[Border apprehensions] “My approval rating is down 55 percent. It’s not because of the Republicans, it’s because of their actions. It’s because of the actions of the president and the vice president,” Jean-Pierre replied.
“We’re going to debunk this false portrayal of the vice president. She was not a border patrol officer. We’re not alone. Independent fact checkers are saying the same thing. It never happened and it’s not true,” she added.
Harris has been widely dubbed the “border czar” since President Biden directed her in March 2021 to address the root causes of mass migration from Latin America. (Sait Serkan Gurbuz/Associated Press)
Harris broadly states,Border Emperor“After President Biden directed her in March 2021 to address the root causes of mass migration from Latin America.”
In July 2021, she Five Basic Strategies To combat the “root causes” of illegal immigration. The plan did not include specific policies, but instead called for “diplomacy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, and sanctions” to “establish a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system.”
The document highlighted the “driving” factors for migration in Central America, including natural disasters, poverty, hunger and gang violence, that cause people to leave their homes in search of a better life.
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“The root causes of migration in Central America run deep, and migration from the region has a direct impact on the United States,” Harris said at the time. “That’s why the United States must continue to work with the region to address the challenges that are driving people to leave Central America and come to our border.”
Republicans criticizing the Biden administration’s policies tend to emphasize “pull” factors – US policies that encourage illegal immigration by offering migrants amnesty, protection from deportation, employment opportunities, entitlements and other benefits. These push and pull factors interact, resulting in an unprecedented increase in the number of people attempting to cross the southern border illegally in recent years.
Harris spoke to media after arriving in El Paso, Texas, on Friday, June 25, 2021, and disembarking from Air Force Two. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
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Customs and Border Protection officers encountered about 2.5 million people attempting to enter along the southwest border in fiscal year 2023, a record high.
Harris’ efforts have secured more than $5 billion in private investment in Northern Triangle countries, yet the number of illegal immigrants into the U.S. has set new records every year since Biden appointed Harris to lead the issue. Border apprehensions from these countries have fallen from 700,000 in FY21 to less than 500,000 in FY23, but it is unclear to what extent this decline is linked to the Root Causes Strategy.
Republican critics have criticized the vice president for making only one brief visit to El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2021, where there were relatively few encounters.
While the Biden administration has rejected using “border czar” as an informal title for Harris’ role, the term was used by her critics and embraced by several news organizations, at least until she emerged as a top candidate.
Axios on Wednesday Report on “Border Chaos” This has been troubling for Harris, who is told by the paper that “the Trump campaign and Republicans have repeatedly given her the title of ‘Secretary for Border Affairs,’ but she never actually holds such a title.”
Major liberal media outlets have suggested that Kamala Harris was never President Biden’s “border secretary,” despite past reports using the same phrase. (Brendan Smiarowski/AFP)
But critics cited Axios’ own reporting from 2021 that Biden had named Harris as “secretary for border affairs.” Axios later added an editor’s note, saying, “This story has been updated to clarify that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly referred to Harris as ‘secretary for border affairs’ in 2021.”
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“The propaganda press trying so hard to erase the fact that Kamala Harris has been put in charge of border control not only shows how weak her role in border control is, but also how weak her overall incompetence is,” The Federalist editor-in-chief Molly Hemingway responded on X.
The debate over Harris’ role and responsibilities on the border began when the House of Representatives voted on a bipartisan basis to condemn her handling of the issue. Six Democrats joined all Republicans in voting in favor of the bill, which passed 220-196.
While encounters at the border have dropped dramatically in recent months, a CBP source told Fox News that the number of “known fugitives” who have evaded arrest has topped 200,000 so far this fiscal year.
Fox News’ William La Jeunesse and Griff Jenkins and Fox News Digital’s Joseph Wolfson and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
