SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Within months of taking office, President Joe Biden assigned his vice president, Kamala Harris, to effectively become a leading point person on the border, coordinate diplomatic relationships and address the "root causes" of migration into the United States. Now, the Trump campaign is framing that effort as a failure, even as Democrats tout success.
Team 10 senior investigator Jim Avila, a former White House correspondent, breaks down the issue.
"That's why I've asked the vice president of the United States yesterday to be the lead person on dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in the first place," said President Joe Biden in March 2021.
The assignment for Vice President Harris was to focus on what was happening south of the border in the countries from which migrants were coming. She was never actually named "Border Czar." That was a moniker coined by Republicans, and it stuck.
"I remember Vice President Harris was appointed the 'Border Czar.' Whatever happened to that?" said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana).
Vice President Harris traveled to Mexico and Guatemala in June 2021. In her remarks, she focused on economic instability, violence and corruption, telling migrants the border is not open.
"The goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home. At the same time, I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come," Harris said at the time.
Back home, Harris faced sharp criticism for not going to the border itself, and bristled when pressed in an NBC News interview.
"We've been to the border," Harris said.
"You haven't been to the border," NBC News anchor Lester Holt pressed.
"And I haven't been to Europe. I mean... I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not discounting the importance of the border," Harris replied.
Just weeks later, Harris would visit the southern border, and again, she told migrants, "Do not come."
In El Paso, she toured Border Patrol facilities and met with groups that help migrants. Again, her focus was on what causes people to come in the first place. She largely left border security enforcement to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Over the next two years, the vice president secured more than $5 billion to address those root causes in Central America. Nearly a billion was targeted to the "Central America Forward" initiative, which developed the region's jobs and women's empowerment programs.
The Biden administration has deported or expelled nearly 4.5 million people, the highest for any single president since George W. Bush.
Harris has agreed with criticism that our immigration system is broken; she said in March, "We need to fix it." However, she points the blame at Senate Republicans, who were pushed by former President Donald Trump to kill a bipartisan border security deal.
Harris said that's because Trump would prefer to run on a problem rather than fix it.
