President Joe Biden touched Kamala Harris to tackle the daunting issue of immigration in March 2021, but the vice president’s public work to address the root causes of migration largely evaporated within months, according to an NBC News analysis of public documents, aid disbursements of the US and Harris’s travel calendar.
Harris traveled to Mexico in June 2021 to sign an agreement that led to a commitment of $4 billion in direct assistance and more than $5.2 billion in U.S. public-private investment. But she has not visited the southern border, or countries to the south, since January 2022. And despite calls for Mexico for more investment, its “Root Cause Strategy” made no new financial commitments.
When Harris became the “border tsar,” as critics called it, the administration was under pressure from both sides to deal with the growing number of migrants — especially unaccompanied children — crossing the border and landing in poor conditions in U.S. custody. On March 24, 2021, Biden took the stage at the White House and appeared to hand over the keys to the matter to his vice president.
“The vice president has agreed — among many other things she has led, and I appreciate that — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort to work with these nations to accept returnees and improve migration enforcement at their borders,” Biden said.
In accepting the assignment, Harris made his role more specific, largely describing diplomatic responsibilities. “I look forward to engaging in diplomacy with the government, the private sector, 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 region. We will collaborate with Mexico and other countries in the Western Hemisphere.”
Biden administration officials pointed to those observations in rejecting criticism that Harris has not resolved the crisis at the border, where there have been record crossings under Biden. They say her job was not about working with countries in the region to address root causes, and they reject the derisive title “border czar.”
The Border Patrol union says Harris failed to fulfill any of her immigration-related duties.
When Harris’ name is mentioned at the border, “it’s a lot of twists and turns,” said Jon Anfinsen, national executive vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol union.
“I would ask what she did in terms of solving the root causes. This has been a goal of hers for many years. What has changed? I would say it hasn’t improved; it just got worse,” Anfinsen said. “Right around that time, it just disappeared and you didn’t hear it.”
But Daniel Suvor, who was Harris’ policy chief from 2014 to 2017 while she was California’s attorney general, said he was not surprised she was chosen to address the root causes of migration in Central America.
“She has been interested in Central America for some time and has built a wide range of relationships there,” Suvor said.
Suvor said Harris’ connections in Latin America stem from her work as attorney general to combat drug trafficking by transnational criminal organizations and her trips to Mexico City to meet with foreign officials.
“She understood from then on that we needed to work with the Mexican government, El Salvador, Honduras, the Guatemalan government, to confront the cartels.”
‘Do not come’
An NBC News analysis found that his travel to address deep-seated issues in the region was largely limited to June 2021, with a trip to the border in El Paso, Texas, and another to Mexico and Guatemala. She made an additional trip to Honduras in January 2022.
His work in Guatemala may have been memorable. That’s where she faced criticism from immigration groups for telling migrants “don’t come” to the U.S.
But his work in Mexico was undoubtedly his most significant. It was there that Mexico and the US signed a memorandum of understanding to “strengthen development cooperation in northern Central America…to exchange knowledge, experiences, goods and resources to address the root causes of irregular migration in northern Central America Central,” according to a State Department description of the agreement.
The agreement sent funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development, along with those from the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation, to help people in Central America. Since then, the US has remained on track to meet its $4 billion commitment to address root causes, but Harris has also managed to solicit significant aid from private companies, which have invested $5.2 billion in the region. since 2021.
These investments have funded entrepreneurs, guaranteed labor rights, strengthened food security and launched “19 projects in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras across all sectors, including financial inclusion, healthcare, climate finance and affordable housing,” according to the White House.
Since 2021, however, the Root Causes Strategy has made no new commitments, despite Mexican calls for more direct investment from the US, and not just from US companies.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in May 2022 that the private investment strategy is too slow.
“We are convincing the United States government to invest promptly,” he said at a press conference. “They have a very special system – they think it’s enough to promote private investments. That if factories, factories are set up in Central America, then jobs will be created. … That’s good, but it takes time.”
Harris made one more trip to Central America after 2021, to attend the inauguration of Honduran President Xiomara Castro in January 2022. According to the White House, Harris spoke with her about “combating corruption and gender-based violence as a way to address the root causes of migration.”
Since then, he has held two meetings in Washington, one with López Obrador in July 2022 and the other more recently with the president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, in March.
A White House official defended Harris’ record and said her work continues. “Vice President Harris continues to lead the effort to address the root causes of migration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, including generating more than $5.2 billion in investment in the region to give people economic opportunities at home. These investments are creating jobs and have connected more than 4.5 million people to the Internet and brought more than 2.5 million people into the formal financial system.”
“Under the vice president’s leadership, the Biden-Harris administration continues to implement the Root Causes Strategy. As part of this strategy, the Administration is on track to fulfill its commitment to provide $4 billion to the region over four years and continues to work to combat corruption, reduce violence and empower women,” wrote the White House official.
Think tanks that study immigration and international non-governmental organizations have also questioned the impact of Harris’ work on addressing immigration.
“She had a very narrow mandate, which was to be the diplomatic representative to Central America at a time when most unauthorized immigration was coming from Central America,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington. .
Since 2021, immigration from the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, once leaders in illegal immigration across the southwest border, has fallen from 86,089 in March 2021 to 25,015 in June 2024, according to Customs data. and Border Protection.
But immigration experts stress that the decline is likely driven by other factors, including U.S. policies restricting asylum at the border and an increase in Mexican interdictions of U.S.-bound migrants. And during this period, migration from countries like Venezuela and China — where Harris has no involvement in immigration discussions — increased.
Selee said USAID took over the money the U.S. sent to Central America for development, while Harris remained focused on private sector investment.
“Vice President Harris has been very engaged diplomatically from the beginning with Central American governments, paving the way for the implementation of these two initiatives and talking about how to curb unauthorized migration,” Selee said. “But from what I can tell, she just hasn’t remained as diplomatically engaged in it. And, you know, over time, the State Department and the National Security Council really took over the diplomatic side.”
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, highlighted Harris’ role in launching an anti-corruption task force with the Department of Justice focused on Northern Triangle countries.
“I think she [Harris] played a leading role in addressing root causes,” said Vignarajah.
“Do we believe this solves the problem? No of course not. And this is where Congress needs to be a real actor,” she said.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
