Topline
House Republicans passed a resolution Thursday criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ record on immigration as attacks on her work have ramped up since she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee—referring to her as the Biden administration’s “border czar”—but their criticisms misinterpret the actual task Harris was given on immigration, which is more narrowly focused on why people immigrate in the first place.
Vice President Kamala Harris tours the El Paso Border Patrol Station, on June 25, 2021 in El Paso, … [+]
Key Facts
The Trump campaign and his allies have made Harris’ handling of the border crisis into one of their main attacks against Harris in recent weeks at the Republican National Convention and as she’s taken over for President Joe Biden as nominee, and the House passed a resolution Thursday in a 220-196 vote that “strongly condemn[s] the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.”
Biden tapped Harris in March 2021 to lead a much more narrow diplomatic effort to curb migration from the “Northern Triangle” countries—Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador—and address the root causes for why residents there immigrate to the U.S. in the first place, along with enhancing other countries’ borders that those migrants travel through along the way before they get to the U.S.
She was never tasked with managing border security in the U.S., which is under the purview of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who said in June 2021 Harris is “leading our nation’s efforts to address the root causes—that fundamental question of why people leave their homes,” while he is “address[ing] the security and management of our border.”
Harris has led efforts on addressing those root causes, particularly in getting private sector investment in the region to improve its economy—which the White House said in March had created 250,000 jobs—with Honduran Minister of Investment Miguel Medina telling CNN that working with major companies is “not something that is accessible to a normal company in Honduras” without U.S. involvement, and “if it wasn’t for this being moved from the White House, there’s … no way we could have had the success” the initiative on private sector investment has had.
Addressing the root causes of migration is something that by nature will take longer to bear fruit than more immediate efforts to stop migrants at the border—so it’s harder to see how Harris’ work has had an impact—with Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, telling TIME that while the VP did “reasonably well” in working with the private sector, her assignment is one “that could not produce results anytime soon.”
Immigration levels from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have gone down in the years since Harris’ assignment began, with data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) showing encounters with migrants from those three countries have dropped from approximately 700,000 in 2021 to 500,000 in 2023—while encounters with migrants from other countries outside Harris’ purview, like Colombia, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela have gone up.
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Contra
Though Harris didn’t take on the expansive role on immigration in the White House that conservatives allege, some of what she has done on immigration has still drawn controversy throughout her vice presidency. She was criticized by the left for telling people thinking of migrating to the U.S. in a June 2021 speech, “Do not come,” adding, “If you come to our border, you will be turned back.” The vice president also came under scrutiny for not visiting the border early in her tenure. NBC News’ Lester Holt asked her in an interview why she hadn’t visited the border and Harris got defensive, telling Holt, “This whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.” When Holt responded that Harris hadn’t personally been there, she said, “And I haven’t been to Europe” and didn’t “understand the point that you’re making.” She then visited border facilities in El Paso, Texas, later that month—though Republicans still criticized her for not visiting areas with a higher concentration of border crossings.
Crucial Quote
“Border policy focuses on individuals who have already made the decision to leave home and have made it to the U.S.-Mexico border and aims to either prevent them or to quickly process them for humanitarian relief or deportation once they cross,” American Immigration Council policy director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick told USA Today about how Harris’ work contrasts with typical border security policy. “By contrast, ‘root causes’ policy focuses on individuals who have not left their homes yet, and aims to convince them to stay in their home countries either through economic development … or through reduction of violence and persecution that forces people to seek protection elsewhere.”
What Did Kamala Harris Do On Immigration Before Becoming Vice President?
Harris has a record of opposing Republican policies that stretches back before her time as vice president. The first bill she introduced as senator after being elected to the office in 2016 sought to guarantee legal access for people detained entering the U.S. after then-President Donald Trump enacted his “travel ban,” and she was the first Democrat to say she wouldn’t support a government spending bill without protections for “DREAMers” in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. As California’s attorney general, she took steps like ordering law enforcement to help crime victims apply for visas. Harris attracted controversy from the left when she served as San Francisco’s district attorney, however, as she sided with then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, now California’s governor, on a widely criticized policy to report juvenile undocumented immigrants to authorities regardless of whether they had been charged with a crime. The policy led to more than 100 people being reported and was later overturned by legislation, The Sacramento Bee reports.
Key Background
Harris suddenly became the Democratic Party’s new major presidential candidate last weekend after Biden announced Sunday he was pulling out of the presidential race, endorsing Harris as his successor minutes later. The vice president received the backing of enough delegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee the next day, and her campaign has drawn widespread endorsements and raked in more than $100 million in donations in its starting days. She will not be the official nominee until delegates for the Democratic Party formally vote for her in a roll-call vote set to take place in early August. Republicans’ attacks on her immigration policies come as the GOP has gone after the Biden administration on immigration amid an influx of migrants, with CBP reporting that encounters with migrants went up from 1.95 million in 2021 to 3.2 million in 2023. There have already been encounters with more than 2.4 million migrants so far this year. The GOP has decried the White House’s handling of the border crisis as a result, and the Biden administration has taken steps like suspending asylum admissions in response.
