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Kamala Harris was never the border czar

Published on 27 Comments on Kamala Harris was never the border czar

Did Joe Biden really appoint Kamala Harris as a "border czar"? Nope. Here's an AP dispatch reporting what happened:

Harris is tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders, administration officials said. She’s also tasked with developing and implementing a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.

At lunch today a friend urged me to revisit Biden's actual announcement. So I did. Here it is (cleaned up slightly):

I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that are going to need help in stemming the migration to our southern border.

....The Vice President has agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders. We’re already talking with Mexico about that; she’s already done that.

This is about as clear as it could be. Biden was reinstituting an Obama-era program that addressed the "root causes" of migration from Central America: gang violence, drug trafficking, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and so forth. Harris was in charge of working with key countries on this and distributing $700 million in funding. Here's how it worked out:

Illegal migration from the three countries Harris targeted declined from 50% of the total to less than 20% today. In raw numbers, migration from those countries peaked at about 100,000 shortly after Harris took over and began declining after that. Total migration today is less than 30,000 per month.

If there was ever an actual border czar, it was and is Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Republicans know this very well. They even tried to impeach him for being a bad czar.

27 thoughts on “Kamala Harris was never the border czar”

  1. D_Ohrk_E1

    You understand of course that Republicans, especially the rabid partisan ones, are incapable of understanding nuance.

    2. Josef

      it also proves the Democrats are capable of dealing with the migration problem far better than either Trump or his sychophant minions in the GOP.

  2. tigersharktoo

    Gee, if only there were a bipartisan Immigration Bill. Oh wait there was one. And then some idiot in Florida said don't vote for it.

  4. bebopman

    The Republican/Trump pitch on the border should get nowhere since the deal to address the border was killed by Trump after republicans agreed to it. But reality has long been absent from the Republican mindset. If trump says Dems killed the deal or that there never was a deal, his cult will fully believe it.

    1. dausuul

      We focus way too much on the subset of Republicans who are all-in on Trump. Yeah, they'll believe whatever raw sewage dribbles out of his mouth, but so what? Their votes for him were locked in from the get-go -- just like we were prepared to vote for Joe Biden's month-old corpse if necessary to stop him.

      What matters is the swing voters who will decide the election, and what *they* will believe remains an open question.

      2. bbleh

        This indeed. His cult are write-offs. It's the "leaners" that matter.

        &btw, more specifically, I would argue that it's the DEM-LEANING leaners that matter. At this point, almost nobody switches parties. What happens instead is, some leaners don't vote and others do. That means the advantage goes to the side that turns out its leaners. GOTV is the key this year. (And right now, the Reps have effectively NO GOTV operation.)

        If you want to volunteer, find a GOTV operation -- there are many that work online or otherwise from home.

    1. Gilgit

      Yes. She said it clearly and it was very widely reported at the time. Any Republican that tries to claim they never heard her say this is either lying (good guess) or so uninformed they are willfully ignorant.

  6. Justin

    It is perfectly reasonable for people to observe that democrats (especially the more lefty folks) think that immigration is good and that more would be better. They are, it seems, unbothered by the asylum seekers even if their fears of persecution are unfounded. I'm not sure why trump and his storm troopers don't just make that reasonable argument. Well, I know why they don't... they are idiots and lunatics.

    I'm not sure I see the value in the chart. Aren't there more migrants from Venezuela now? And China? And other places which render % analysis kind of misleading?

    It doesn't matter. We're in favor of immigration from all these places. We should be chartering planes and ships to bring them here so they can avoid the dangerous trip.

    1. bbleh

      A truly Trumpian pastiche of untruths. First sentence, untrue. Second sentence, blatantly untrue, even with the qualifier. Third sentence, a matter of opinion, but untruths generally aren't "reasonable."

      But it illustrates well why Trump is lying about Harris (in this way, in this case). Republicans look down on &/or actively despise non-Whites, and "immigration" and "border" are code for non-White (and non-English-speaking), so tag Harris with them. The cult are easily driven to anger -- they're anger junkies; they love it -- so direct some of their anger and hatred at her.

      It really is amazing how debased Republican politics have become.

  8. spatrick

    "Aren't there more migrants from Venezuela now?

    Indeed, the whole migrant "crisis" was largely due to Venezuelans fleeing their collapsing country

  10. Five Parrots in a Shoe

    Free movement of goods, services, capital, and information, are good for the economy. And economists of all political stripes will point out that free movement of labor is good, too. That means legal immigration should be easy.

    Immigration is one of those issues that pits the business wing of the R Party against the racist wing. And ever since Trump came along the racist wing has been dominant. Hence the lies about Harris.

  12. name99

    This seems like an exceptionally petty line of argument.

    Yes, officially there is no Executive Position named "Border Czar". (Just like there is no "Drug Czar" or no "Housing Czar".)
    But NORMAL PEOPLE understand that someone tasked as being the primary person in the administration responsible for handling this issue can be labelled such, and Harris was given that task.
    It's not crazy to call the behavior today (including Kevin's) Orwellian.

    Unbiased observers can look at this Twitter Thread and make up their own minds:
    https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1816247926303182898

    But as for me (currently undecided) it's this sort of **** that reminds me that perhaps the Dem Party (not always, not in the past, hopefully not in the future, but right now, this year in 2024) is the greater threat to Liberal Democracy than the (admittedly awful) alternative.

    Kevin is trying to say that Harris did a good job as Border Czar.
    That's a fine line of rebuttal. BUT it's noit the argument we are seeing. The argument we are seeing is the Orwellian claim that she was never appointed as "Border Czar".

    1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

      Republicans say you are wrong. They all said the Border Czar was Alejandro Mayorkas. The first article of impeachment against him, filed just eight months ago, said that he "willfully and systematically refused to comply with Federal immigration laws".

      Why didn't they impeach Harris, too?

    2. lawnorder

      I don't think any reasonable person can look at the actual words Biden used in giving Kamala her very limited immigration related diplomatic assignment and decide that those words appoint her as "border czar".

    3. ColBatGuano

      Yes, some crank rightwingers Twitter thread should be the definitive evidence of your mental imbalance. You are the threat to our democracy.

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