The Democrats’ claim that Kamala Harris wasn’t President Biden’s border czar borders on the bizarre. It contradicts everything the administration has said or done on immigration since Harris’s was given this ill-fated mission more than three years ago.
For an administration already compromised on credibility, this plumbs new depths.
On July 25, Karine Jean-Pierre vainly tried to revise Harris’s border role: “We are going to debunk the false characterization of the vice president. She was not a border czar.”
Jean-Pierre is not alone; there is also a concerted effort by the administration’s media allies to expunge Harris’s responsibility for the administration’s historic illegal immigration surge.
On July 24, Axios reported on “confusion around the vice president’s exact role” on immigration. Yet it added an editor’s note explaining that: “Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.”
The problem is that characterizing Harris as the administration’s “border czar” is not incorrect. The words, actions and timing of the administration and Harris both confirm it.
When Biden put Harris in charge of the border in March 2021, he said she would be part of a “full team” that would “deal with the problem here at home” and “in terms of in-country.” He added that “it’s not her full responsibility and job, but she’s leading the effort.”
So Biden’s appointment of Harris as the administration’s point person on immigration was about as comprehensive as it could be. The problem was not in its vagueness, but Harris’s execution of her comprehensive responsibility.
Less than three months later, Harris had an embarrassing June 2021 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, in which she said, “We have to deal with what’s happening at the border, there’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point.”
When Holt pressed her on visiting the Mexican border itself, something Harris had not done, she became defensive, saying: “At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”
When Holt corrected her by reminding her that she hadn’t been to the border, Harris laughed: “And I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”
When Harris finally did visit the border later that month she said “I said back in March I was going to come to the border, so this is not a new plan.”
At no point in her public utterances did Harris deny her responsibility over illegal immigration across our southern border. If it was outside her responsibilities, it would have been logical for her to immediately correct the record. But Biden had said she was “leading the effort,” in addition to her other responsibilities. And her remarks at that time show her taking full responsibility, from the U.S. southern border all the way into Central America.
Needless to say, as soaring illegal immigration numbers over three years have shown, Harris had no success at either end of the pipeline.
Further, the Border Patrol union criticized her contribution to the border crisis: “If you were given a job two years ago with the explicit goal of reducing illegal immigration, and then you sit around and do nothing while illegal immigration explodes to levels never seen before, you should be fired and replaced. Period.”
According to reports, the last two border patrol chiefs claim that Harris has never talked to them.
Finally, when the House voted last week on a resolution “strongly condemning the Biden administration and its border czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border,” six Democrats voted for it.
Today’s denials by the administration and Harris are also contradicted by their actions and timing. Why was Harris defensive about Holt’s border questions? If the border wasn’t her responsibility, why not simply say so? And if it wasn’t, why did Harris then travel to it less than three weeks later?
Why, if Harris wasn’t the border czar, didn’t the administration correct the record immediately? The border crisis has been a huge issue throughout this administration’s term, why wait over three years to correct such a fundamental fact?
As America hears the administration trying to exculpate Harris, it should consider the source. These are the same people who for 2024’s first six months insisted that Biden was capable of running for president, allowed him to run uncontested through the primaries, resisted all questions about his ability and fought tenaciously to keep him in the race.
Now, these same sources, who denied illegal immigration was a crisis throughout their tenure, want to deny Harris was in charge of administration efforts to address it.
No, Harris’s immigration problem isn’t one of confusion. It is one of evasion — a microcosm of its macro failure on illegal immigration. Sadly, it’s par for the course for this administration and its media allies.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.