By: Todd Bensman
July 30, 2024
Okay, fine: Vice President Kamala Harris never held an official government title called “border czar.” But the media fact checkers and partisan fans who have zeroed in on separating her from that euphemistic title — as though this silly contest over rhetoric absolves her of responsibility for the worst mass migration crisis in American history — does not cut the anchor line.
The president of the United States assigned Harris to “lead the effort” of the administration’s signature border security strategy, the main one he chose above all others, for ending mass illegal immigration over the southern border. That strategy was to alleviate the so-called “root causes”spurring outmigration from its most common sources — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, also known as the Northern Triangle.
The president and his top lieutenants regarded the root-causes doctrine — which calls for nation-building to induce aspiring emigrants to stay home instead — as central to his entire border-management strategy and found Harris a highly willing, eager root causes chief.
“I look forward to engaging in diplomacy with government, with private sector, with civil society, and … the leaders of each in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to strengthen democracy and the rule of law, and ensure shared prosperity in the region,” Harris responded after her presidential appointment at a March 24, 2021, press event announcing her new role.
A few months later, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reiterated that Harris would lead a “whole-of-government approach” to “lead the Administration’s work on our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, a testament to the importance this administration places on improving conditions in the region.”
Inalterable Numbers
Hard, inalterable facts also show that Harris’ leadership over the implementation of the U.S. root causes doctrine was as complete a failure as any in American history. It rightly saddles her and her boss with what happened to our country as a direct result — a record-smashing 10 million foreign nationals crossing the southern border in 36 months, because the top team let most of them in to stay.
Before Covid, in fiscal year 2019, U.S. Border Patrol apprehended a total of 609,775 Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans crossing the border. By the end of Harris’ first year overseeing the root causes strategy in 2021, that number was 701,049. During the next two years of Harris overseeing the root causes doctrine, Border Patrol encountered another 1,036,904 such immigrants.
So far this fiscal year through the end of June, Border Patrol has encountered another 347,911, which projects out to another more than half million by fiscal year’s end on October 1. That’s well more than 2 million more immigrants from the Northern Triangle during those four years.
To somehow buy away bad conditions in source countries but never explaining how, when, or offering accountability benchmarking, the Biden administration pledged a $3 billion downpayment to Central America over four years, including $860.6 million in fiscal year 2022 and $986 million in fiscal year 2023.
Harris showed no reluctance to downplay, hide, or diminish her role leading this essential administration strategy. In fact, she later held press conferences boasting of having coaxed some American companies to invest in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador as a positive result of her personal leadership.
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