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Perhaps chief among Kamala Harris’ vulnerabilities is her work on immigration as Joe Biden’s vice president — Harris was tasked with trying to address the core causes for migration into the US across the southern border, but illegal crossings also rose.
Republicans have seized on this weakness, describing her as Biden’s “border czar,” while Democrats have argued that Harris did the best she could in the circumstances — and point out that her job wasn’t to police the border, but tackle the complicated push factors driving migration, like poverty, violence, and corruption in Central America.
Nevertheless, polls show Americans are concerned about what’s happening at the border, ranking it as one of the most pressing issues facing the nation — and Harris’ record is very much in the spotlight.
SIGNALS
Harris was ‘set up to fail’ on the border
When Biden assigned Harris to head an initiative to address the root causes of the border crisis — a role he held as Barack Obama’s vice president — he saw it as a positive for her political career. “That made sense in 2014 and 2015. It didn’t make sense in 2021,” Andrea Flores, a National Security Council border expert told The New Yorker. “All eyes were on the border. It was a day-to-day, on-the-ground operational emergency. She was set up to fail, because by now the issue was about so much more than root causes.” And while dealing with core causes is essential from a policy perspective, slow, incremental progress doesn’t offer immediate political payout.
Confusion around Harris’ role didn’t help her case
Harris was never named Biden’s “border czar,” though that’s how her role came to be known colloquially. She struggled to explain what her actual role was, and once corrected Biden when he said she’d do a “hell of a job” on immigration. But the messaging was too confusing, The New Yorker wrote. When the Biden Administration sent Harris to the border, it looked like she was responsible for the border. And the administration’s “early infighting, blame-shifting and indecision around their border response does not help her, either,” Axios wrote.
Conservatives say Democrats’ are revising Harris’ history
Some right-leaning commentators have accused the media and Democrats of rewriting history to favor Harris, pointing to early reports that described her role as focused on “both curbing the current flow of migrants and coordinating with countries in the region to address the root causes of migration.” Arizona Republic columnist Phil Boas argued that Harris was given the assignment and then quit because as CNN reported in 2021, she saw the task as “a no-win political situation that would only sandbag her in the future.”