Vice President Kamala Harris is seen as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2024, and since winning President Biden’s endorsement, her leadership in addressing the migrant crisis at the southern border has been an issue. But what is her role and track record?
March 2021 — Border Order
Migrant crossings at the southern border, which had been rising in the final months of the Trump administration, have soared since Biden took office. Biden has also tried to reverse some Trump-era policies and halt deportations. As the number of migrants surges, Biden told reporters he would appoint Harris to lead the effort to address the root causes of the problems his administration believes are driving migrants north, including climate change, poverty and violence.
“She has about five other major issues on her plate, but I’ve asked the vice president today to lead our efforts with Mexico, the Northern Triangle and donor countries who are going to need our assistance to stem the flow of many people, stem the migration to our southern border,” he said.
The incident led to Ms Harris being dubbed the “border czar” by the media and Republicans – a title the White House rejected but which has stuck with her ever since, and which has made her, along with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a symbol of the crisis.
Why now? Media largely silent on timing of sudden crackdown on Kamala Harris’ “border czar” label
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters after arriving at El Paso International Airport in El Paso, Texas, on June 25, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
June 2021 “Don’t come”
Harris came under pressure to visit the border immediately after Biden’s appointment as the president, as migrant numbers surged to record highs in the months since. The White House said her role was diplomatic and not directly related to the border. Harris has traveled to Mexico and Guatemala, sending tough anti-immigration messages that have angered immigration activists.
“Don’t come. Don’t come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and protect our borders,” she said. “If you come to the border you will be turned away.”
But migrants continued to arrive, and the crisis only grew in the following months.
June 2021 — “I Voted for You”
An awkward moment occurred during a trip to Mexico when she invited a reporter named Maria Fernanda to ask a question during a press conference, but the reporter was actually an activist.
“I voted for you,” she said. “My question is, what do you say to these women, these mothers, and these women of color on both sides of the border, these farmers, the many messages of hope that I see every day, but also, what are you going to do for them in the coming years?”
June 2021 “I’ve never been to Europe.”
As pressure mounted for her to go to the U.S. southern border, Harris resisted.
After she claimed to have been to the border, NBC’s Lester Holt told her, “You’ve never been to the border.”
“And I’ve never been to Europe,” Harris joked.
Later that month, she visited the border in El Paso, Texas, where she received a briefing and toured a processing center while meeting with advocates and providers.
Migrants at the front of the line will be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (John Michael Raasch/Fox News Digital)
Reports of dissent within Kamala circles
As the crisis continued, reports emerged that Harris was unhappy with her role in general, including the border mission. Politico reported that the border visit was a “tumultuous moment” for an office dealing with declining trust and low morale. In one book published in 2023, the author reported that Harris had neglected her duties.
“She was led by her critics,” Franklin Fore wrote in The Last Statesman, “and she seems to have approached the Central American mission with little enthusiasm, having accepted the conventional wisdom about it. It was a futile task, so she threw it aside and missed the opportunity of making any effort of any meaningful consequence.”
September 2021: The Tale of “Whipping”
Harris was among the administration members who stoked a theory, since proven false, that migrants were being whipped by Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio area.
“The way that people on horseback treat human beings like that is appalling from what I’ve seen,” Harris told reporters. “And I fully support what’s going on now, which is a full investigation into what’s going on there. But human beings should never be treated like that. I’m deeply troubled by that. And I’ll be speaking with the secretary of state again.” [Alejandro] I will be speaking to Mayorkas about that today.”
Subsequent investigations found that staff had committed minor infractions, but that the underlying allegation that the migrants had been whipped was untrue.
February 2022: More time needed
Harris will likely remain largely silent on the root cause solutions strategy through the remainder of 2021 and 2022, though private sector efforts to attract investment to address the root causes will continue. But she is unlikely to visit the border again.
Vice President Kamala Harris with migrants at the southern border. (Getty Images)
With the numbers still high, surpassing 2021 figures, Harris warned not to expect immediate results from his strategy.
“None of this is something you can just flip a switch on. It takes focus and intention. It takes investment over a period of time. So, simply put, the benefits won’t happen overnight because the problems didn’t happen overnight,” she said in an interview.
AXIOS criticized in community note after claiming Harris was never “emperor of the borders”
June 2022: Los Angeles Summit
In June 2022, she attended the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, where she met with other leaders on how to address the crisis. At the meeting, she announced that $3.2 billion in funding had been secured from private companies. She also doubled down on the root causes of the crisis.
“First of all, I think most people don’t want to leave their homes. They don’t want to leave their grandmothers. They don’t want to leave their places of faith or the communities that they’ve always known,” she said. “So when they do leave, it’s usually for one of two reasons: to escape harm, or because they’re not able to meet the basic needs of themselves and their family by staying.”
But the summer of 2022 is set to see record numbers of encounters with migrants, and the numbers are set to get even worse in 2023.
September 2022: “The border is secure”
Coming off a record-breaking summer, Harris came under fire for declaring the border secure despite the ongoing crisis and mass releases into the interior.
“Our border is secure, but our immigration system is broken and needs fixing, especially over the last four years before we got here,” Harris said on NBC.
2023: More record breaking
While Harris has made few public appearances on the border crisis in 2023, her private investment strategy has continued to draw additional commitments from companies.
But the crisis stayed out of the news, and 2023 saw new records set by huge numbers of migrant encounters and chaos at the border.
In fiscal year 2023, more than 2.4 million encounters were recorded, with December recording nearly 250,000 encounters in a single month.
2024: Bipartisan bill, support for executive order
While the White House continues to reject the “border czar” narrative, Harris supported a bipartisan Senate agreement to increase funding for the border and reduce migrant crossings once certain levels are reached.
She also supported several executive orders by President Biden implementing asylum restrictions and efforts to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are spouses of U.S. citizens.
For more coverage on the border security crisis, click here
As Harris begins to take on the role of a 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, she spoke proudly of what she sees as her team’s success in that role.The project, which attracts private investment in the region through calls to action, has seen more than $5.2 billion invested by more than 50 companies and organizations since May 2021. Additionally, the number of visits from Northern Triangle countries has fallen from more than 700,000 in fiscal year 2021 to less than 330,000 as of May, with four months remaining, officials noted.
However, according to CBP data, during the three and a half years of the Biden/Harris administration, illegal border crossings from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have increased 140% compared to President Trump’s first term and are up 34% over the entire eight years of President Obama’s two terms.
Harris also promised to announce additional solutions to the border crisis, while accusing former President Trump of obstructing reform efforts.
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“[Trump] “Ms. Harris can make up all the lies she wants, but the fact is that there is only one candidate in this race who is fighting for real solutions to secure our borders – Vice President Harris,” said Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz.
Fox News’ Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
