RNC 2024: Kamala Harris is being slammed as a ‘border czar’ by Republicans. Is that true?

If Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, Republicans will have ready evidence against her: They can say she was President Joe Biden’s “border czar” on immigration and border issues, and she failed.

At least seven different speakers at the Republican National Convention last week used the nickname to describe Harris, including the president of Goya Foods, an anti-immigration activist, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.

There’s just one problem. The vice president has never been in charge of border affairs. That job belongs to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

Still, right-wing propaganda, media attention early in Harris’ tenure, poor communication from the White House and a growing influx of immigrants during Biden’s presidency have helped to cement the label, and it is now one of Harris’ most daunting challenges, whether she’s vice president or the presidential candidate.

Calling Harris the “border czar” is nothing new. Right-wing media, anti-immigration activists and Republican politicians have long used the label to refer to the vice president. for many years.

The roots of the matter can be traced back to March 2021, when Biden announced that he would give Harris essentially the same task he had as vice president: coordinating diplomatic relations to address the “root causes” of immigration into the United States.

“Today, I asked the Vice President to lead our work with Mexico, with the Northern Triangle, and with the countries that are going to need help to stem the flow of so much of this migration to our southern border,” Biden said at a White House immigration meeting on March 24, 2021.

The idea behind this approach is a long-term strategy: The surge at the border is just a symptom of the deeper economic, diplomatic and security problems these countries face that drive people to make the trek north. The mission was a bit of a curse from the start — a “politically dangerous job with little short-term reward” because It is described Los Angeles Times reports — Because any benefits of addressing these root causes will obviously take time to show up. Meanwhile, the border sees more legal and illegal crossers every month.

Senior White House officials briefing reporters before the announcement stressed at the time that this was Diplomatic missions: A two-pronged approach to building diplomatic relations with these countries and overseeing investment and foreign aid to address infrastructure issues, develop business, and strengthen civil society.

However, from the beginning, media coverage and White House communications about the role were mixed. Headlines described Harris as “Immigration Contact Person” and”Responsible for the migrant crisis“And senior officials Later he said Harris will “oversee the entire government’s approach to immigration.”

The White House communications team spent a lot of time early on trying to clarify the mission, but as the number of migrant crossings continued to increase, much of the attention in the media and the public was focused on why Harris and the administration were not more focused on solving short-term problems.

The situation was compounded by Harris’ own missteps. She was widely criticized in the media for being too conservative in her first campaign. International Travel Traveling to Mexico and Guatemala in June 2021, and immigrant rights activists speech She urged “people in this region who are thinking of taking the risk of traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border: Don’t come. Don’t come.” She also sidestepped questions about why she had not traveled south of the border even when she spoke abroad about the issue, drawing criticism from Republicans.

Then it appeared Widely ridiculed interview During that trip, she spoke with NBC News’ Lester Holt, and she seemed to laugh off Holt’s question about why she hadn’t visited the southern border if she was working to stem the flow of migrants north. “At some point, you know, we’re going to go to the border,” Harris told Holt. “We’ve been to the border. So the whole border thing. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”

When Holt pointed out that she had not been to Europe, she seemed to brush it off, responding that she had “not been to Europe. I mean, I don’t… understand what you mean. I’m not discounting the importance of borders.”

It comes at an important moment in the context of Harris’ criticism: In the first year of the Biden-Harris presidency, Harris and her office have faced intense media scrutiny over the vice president’s role, her ability to communicate with the public and her office. Internal Dispute. question Swirl The media has questioned whether Harris has entered Biden’s inner circle, has a clear portfolio of tasks, and whether her team is capable of helping her carry out her duties if she clashes with the president’s staff or leaves her office entirely.

Besides this, Harris has another mission that is doomed to fail: lobbying Voting Rights Reform With the Senate tied, Biden and House Democrats’ legislative proposals failed to make it past the filibuster.

Cross-border numbers will continue to surge over the next three years, further fueling criticism of Harris. As my colleague Nicole Narea puts it Already explainedAt the same time, the nature of these immigration waves began to change, making Harris’s “root cause” work more difficult:

During the Trump administration, most migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States came from Central America’s “Northern Triangle”: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. However, in the past few years, the number of migrants from these countries has been replaced by migrants from South America (particularly Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua) and the Caribbean (including Haiti and Cuba), who have been driven by recent intensifications of political and economic crises in their home countries, as well as natural disasters.

Republicans and conservative commentators have pounced on all of this, making immigration a major attack point in the 2022 midterm elections. They have introduced legislation that would tie Harris to the term “border czar,” introduce a “Border Czar Accountability Act” and resolution Calls to strip Harris of her office. They spent hours on cable news and in Congress talking about the Guatemala trip and the Holt interview. They ran ads about immigration during the midterms, linking Biden and Harris to the border “crisis.”

Ultimately, they succeeded in blurring the line between the mission Harris undertook and the deteriorating conditions at the southern border.

The Republican National Convention has now provided a preview of how this line of attack will be used against Harris as the election approaches.

According to Google Trends, searches for this term have surged recently datasimilar to when those numbers spiked when Harris was first given the root-cause assignment, ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, and during previous news coverage about the border.

Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley gave a preview Tuesday night of how the Republican Party plans to respond to the chaos: “Kamala has one job. One job. And that’s to fix the border,” she said. “Now imagine her running the country.”

Other speakers this week cited “Border Czar Kamala Harris” as being responsible for “encouraging millions of illegal immigrants to invade the United States … and prioritizing the welfare of illegal immigrants over citizens,” as Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno put it.

Even Trump’s campaign manager admit This is their best line of attack against the Vice President.

Meanwhile, the White House and Biden campaign appeared to have refrained from responding forcefully to the attacks, calling them “lies” and “smears” and pointing to the vice president’s diplomatic work over the past few years.

The media and the White House paid less attention to the actual assignment she was given, but the administration Routine if renew exist”Root Cause StrategyDuring her first year on the mission, she only visited Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico once, but she did Virtual and exist-people Meeting meetings with heads of state in the region. Central America or Mexico, however, do not seem to be a real focus for the vice president, especially since the midterm elections and the overthrow of Roe v. Wade.

A White House official briefed me on Harris’s visits and roundtables on the mission, noting that Harris has announced $5.2 billion in investments in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to expand internet access and fight corruption. Meanwhile, a Biden campaign official noted that the White House had sought to clarify Harris’s mission in 2021.

As I’ve written before, Republican attacks on the Biden administration’s immigration policies Won’t disappear Soon. American public attitudes toward immigration and the border Rapid deterioration Over the past two years, the details of Harris’s original mandate may not have mattered much to voters who simply wanted to reduce immigration. As long as the public continues to lean anti-immigrant, the “Border Czar” moniker looks set to stick.