Kamala Harris Was Never Biden's Border Czar.' Here's What She Really Did

In fact, Harris was never put in charge of the border or immigration policy. Nor was she involved in overseeing law-enforcement efforts or guiding the federal response to the crisis. Her mandate was much narrower: to focus on examining and improving the underlying conditions in the Northern Triangle of Central America"El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras"which has been racked by decades of poverty, war, chronic violence, and political instability. The strategy relied on allocating billions for economic programs and stimulating private-sector investment in the region in hopes that these programs would ultimately lead fewer migrants to make the dangerous journey north.

The so-called "root causes strategy" focused on improving economic and security conditions by creating jobs, combating corruption, improving human and labor rights, and reducing violence. Harris allocated funds for humanitarian relief from natural disasters, and directed more than 10 million COVID-19 vaccines to the Northern Triangle countries. She held bilateral meetings with the region's leaders, as well as meetings with NGOs, business executives and human rights advocates. She worked with the U.S. Justice Department to launch an Anti-Corruption task force focused on prosecuting corruption cases with ties to the region, as well as Anti-Migrant Smuggling task forces in Mexico and Guatemala.

Most importantly, Harris spearheaded a public-private partnership that, as of March 2024, had secured commitments from major U.S. and multi-national companies to invest more than $5 billion in the region. The Vice President "put her name on the line with very serious senior CEOs and kind of created a brand appeal for Central America that didn't exist," says Ricardo Zniga, who until recently served as the U.S. special envoy to Central America.

Harris also spent time in Washington communicating with regional leaders. One tangible result, according to two former U.S. officials, was that it gave the U.S. the standing and relationships to help prevent Guatemalan prosecutors from overturning the results of last year's presidential election, which was won by anti-corruption outsider Bernardo Arvalo. While delayed, the ultimately peaceful transition of power avoided the political instability that Biden Administration officials feared could cause a spike in migration. The U.S. applied public pressure through sanctions and visa restrictions on officials they accused of undermining the democratic process, as well as behind the scenes. Harris's team was directly involved, especially her national security adviser Philip Gordon, who traveled to the region to push for a peaceful democratic transfer of power, according to the two former U.S. officials.

Republicans call Harris a failed border czar. The facts tell a different story.

Vice President Kamala Harris, tasked to deal with the root causes of migration from Central America as illegal border crossings were rising in 2021, immediately ran into the enormity of the mission.

The region is riddled with corrupt government officials, the drivers of migration are deeply rooted in economic inequality and social factors - and she didn't control the border.

"She was given a very hard, difficult, convoluted portfolio," said U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and an architect of a bipartisan border security bill introduced earlier this year.

The White House said in March that Harris helped engineer $4 billion in government aid and commitments of $5.2 billion in private investment to create or support an estimated 250,000 jobs in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Nespresso started sourcing coffee from El Salvador and Honduras in 2021. Gap Inc said it is on pace to meet a pledge to invest $150 million by 2025 to source textiles in the region and that it had increased yarn production in Guatemala and provided skills training to women in Guatemala and Honduras.

By May, the number of migrants from the Northern Triangle caught crossing illegally had fallen to 25,000 from a peak of 90,000 in July 2021 ...