Kamala Harris’s record as border czar under scrutiny as White House seeks to boost her image
Anna Giaritelli
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Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been much maligned for her role as border czar, is still struggling to stack up wins south of the border after 2 1/2 years as the point person of the White House initiative.
Harris has been on the receiving end of Republican lawmakers’ attacks since President Joe Biden put her in charge of addressing root causes that prompted those in three Central American countries to flee to the United States in record numbers.
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Biden, 80, faces the challenge of convincing voters that he is physically capable of holding another term in office, and all eyes are on Harris’s ability to lead. Even this week, as Biden vacations in Delaware, Harris is ramping up her public appearances and stepping in for her boss.
Harris’s work has unfolded largely behind closed doors, developing diplomatic relations with governments of Northern Triangle countries El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
“She has been front and center on all these efforts,” said a State Department official authorized to speak with the media during a call with the Washington Examiner. “Her mandate is obviously addressing the root causes, but as a leader in the administration, [she] has really tackled all of these critical challenges.”
However, those outside the Biden administration were critical of her effectiveness and claimed she was not involved nor successful in what her office had managed to accomplish.
“The VP has not been a major factor in any movement in border security,” said Rodney Scott, distinguished senior fellow for border security at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation think tank and former Border Patrol chief. “The limited cooperation that the U.S. is getting from Mexico and Panama is primarily a result of relationships established by career professionals within [the Department of Homeland Security] and [Department of State], and not political appointees.”
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) said it was the Biden administration’s own policies that had triggered the rush to the border early on in 2021.
“If Vice President Harris wanted to find the ‘root causes’ of our Southwest border crisis, it would require looking in the mirror. Her own administration’s reckless open-border policies and refusal to enforce our nation’s laws have empowered cartels to take an unprecedented number of our sons’ and daughters’ lives with fentanyl,” Green said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
More people worldwide are displaced — 112 million — than the 70 million displaced following World War II, and the Western Hemisphere is no exception.
Migration to the southern border from far-off countries spiked in 2021 as economic turmoil, and the Biden administration’s eased immigration policies prompted more than 6 million people from other continents to traverse to America and make it over the border.
The number of people encountered at the southern border from countries other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle was seven times greater in fiscal 2021 than the previous year, and that trend has continued.
Biden tapped Harris as the point person of his operation to fix the root causes. In early 2021, the White House announced $310 million in aid to Central America and the appointment of Harris as the leader of diplomatic talks with regional leaders.
The White House’s root causes strategy calls for improving business conditions, addressing corruption within governments, bolstering human rights, countering gangs and cartels, and combating domestic violence.
Harris’s national security adviser led a delegation to Guatemala in May, where her team negotiated an agreement to open a U.S.-run safe mobility office for immigrants to seek admission to the U.S. from there rather than making the long journey north.
In June, the Biden administration announced deals with Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala to begin a six-month implementation of the program. At each of the three sites, people can learn more or apply for refugee processing, humanitarian parole, family reunification, and labor pathways to enter the U.S.
“The vice president has been a leader on the root cause strategy … for Central America but specifically on this effort on safe mobility offices,” according to the State Department official.
Harris’s office also brokered agreements with Panama, the southernmost country in Central America and connected to South America through the Darien jungle, which runs from Panama down into Colombia.
“We’ve seen really positive change in the region as a direct result of the work that Panama has done to manage the challenges of migration,” the State Department official said, adding that the Panamanian government had taken a “very active” approach in its trilateral work with Colombia and the U.S.
Panama is working with the State Department about how to communicate to immigrants traveling through the region that lawful avenues to seek admission have been set up and should be pursued before making the long, dangerous journey north.
Immigrants trekking from Colombia into Panama must pass through the Darien. The State Department official said the number crossing dropped from 1,343 people in April to 990 people in June.
“We’re seeing improvements and … real results in terms of the legal pathways being offered,” the State Department official said.
Private-sector corporations have invested billions of dollars into creating jobs in Central America to boost the economy and provide good-paying jobs. In mid-2022, Harris announced another $2 billion of investments from 10 new companies, including Gap, Visa, and AgroAmerica.
The Washington Office for Latin America’s Adam Isacson said the Biden administration had been successful in increasing funding to the Northern Triangle after the Trump administration cut it off, as well as bringing in historic private sector investments.
“Her banner effort was to try to get private sector investment to increase in the three countries. And they do have numbers they can point to about companies making new investments,” Isacson, the director for defense oversight at WOLA, said.
“They have also increased the amount of money they’ve both asked for and gotten through Congress, just in terms of USAID development assistance, disaster assistance,” Isacson said.
Several immigration experts said the root causes included the lack of stability within each country’s government.
“The United States can’t really do much in humility with the misgovernance across the region, although it can demand more accountability from governance,” TPPF’s chief of intelligence and research, Josh Trevino, said. “But we do have the ability to set our own policy and close the border, which is what we want to do.”
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Isacson said El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras’s governments were so “wracked with corruption” that they would not agree with the U.S. commitment to reform that a root causes strategy would require.
Harris’s office and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on her border record. The Panamanian Embassy in Washington was not able to be reached for comment.