Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Tuesday rejected Republican characterizations of Vice President Harris as the U.S. “border czar,” saying they are the only ones who call her that.
Speaking with Steve Doocy on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Johnson noted that Harris was chosen by President Biden to focus on the root causes of emigration from Central America, not to oversee border operations.
“She took on the role that Vice President Biden had during the Obama administration, which is diplomacy with Central America. That’s a role he had. He gave it to her. She is not the border czar. To the extent that there is anyone who is a border czar, she is the Secretary of Homeland Security,” said Johnson, who ran the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2013 to 2017.
Early in the Biden administration, that task proved difficult for Harris, who struggled to shake the GOP’s border czar moniker.
She also angered some on the left with her first trip abroad as vice president, delivering a simple message to would-be migrants in Mexico and Guatemala: “Don’t come.”
Over the next three years, Harris maintained the root causes portfolio but publicly emphasized her role in other policy areas, such as reproductive rights.
As the government’s point person for addressing the root causes of emigration from Central America, Harris has focused on long-term investments to sustain the region’s economy.
Republicans are stepping up their “border czar” attacks on Harris now that she is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.
In March, the administration announced $1 billion in private sector commitments to invest in the region: since 2021, more than $5 billion has been pledged by public and private entities to promote economic growth in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
However, the immigration debate in the United States has centered on deterrence through border policies, an approach that Johnson said is insufficient.
“The hard lesson I learned, Steve, in managing this problem is that pressure factors always override any defense you can put up on the southern border. There are things we can do to improve enforcement, to be lax in enforcement, that have an immediate short-term impact one way or another,” Johnson said.
“But as long as these overwhelming factors exist, they will continue to arise and that’s what happens – people don’t like to hear this, but we need to address the problem at the source and fix our immigration system here, which is broken.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
