WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is causing offense by painting new presidential campaign rival Kamala Harris as the face of a chaotic U.S. border, building on a mission President Joe Biden gave him in 2021 to work with Central American countries to address “root causes” of migration.
Trump labeled the vice president a “border czar” no less than six times in a fiery rally speech on Thursday in North Carolina, focusing his criticism of her on the overwhelmed asylum system. “Under border czar Harris, illegal aliens are coming in by the millions and millions and millions,” Trump said, drawing boos from the crowd as he called Harris “crazy.”
The term, which Republicans have used widely to criticize Harris, dates back to March 2021, when Harris was tasked with dealing with a surge in Central American migrants, who came primarily from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where violence and organized crime led millions to flee the region. The terms “czar” and “border czar” did not appear in White House materials, but they caught on among critics.
Days later, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, a Republican, made one of the first prominent references to it in a letter to the White House asking Harris “to visit the border and see the crisis for himself.”
“Now that President Biden has named you Border Czar in charge of the administration’s response, I want to express to you the threats and challenges caused by this administration’s open borders policies,” he wrote in a letter.
Harris’s mission was misunderstood: it was a diplomatic task to devise a regional strategy to mitigate the need for migration, not a security task to oversee internal border enforcement.
The White House immediately sought to clarify that Harris’s mandate was not “the border” and that it was narrowly focused on the forces pushing migrants out of the Northern Triangle. But as a crisis fueled by these migrants unfolded, the title remained.
Harris lives on ‘freedom’, says little about migration
More than three years later, Harris is the de facto Democratic presidential nominee following Biden’s late decision to withdraw from the race, and her still-nascent campaign has not focused on immigration or border security. And her public work on addressing the root causes of migration has largely evaporated, an NBC News analysis showed, although the White House said she helped make important investments in Central America and continues to lead on the issue.
Harris has said little about immigration in recent speeches. Her launch video Thursday presents her as the “freedom” candidate, highlighting issues like reproductive rights, access to health care and gun violence — not to mention immigration.
Migration patterns have also changed. The recent increase in border crossings has been driven by immigrants from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and other countries outside the Northern Triangle.
Still, the border security issue presents political pitfalls for Harris and the Democratic Party as it motivates conservatives. Polls have found that voters trust the Republican Party more to handle this. Biden and Democrats in Congress recognized this, crafting a bipartisan border bill with Republicans to address immigration at the southern border, but Trump and his allies in Congress killed it.
Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez accused Harris’ campaign of “fighting to rewrite history about her failures.”
“Border Czar Harris owns the bloodbath on the southern border, including the rape, murder and brutal assault of women like Rachel Morin and Laken Riley. Try as they might, Kamala and her allies cannot change reality: She is responsible for the migrant crime wave and deadly fentanyl in our country, and Americans will hold her accountable when they vote for President Trump in November,” Alvarez said in a affirmation.
A memo Monday from the Senate GOP campaign arm provides talking points for candidates to pursue Harris, saying, “Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s border czar and the architect of his greatest failure.”
Harris campaign goes after Trump for ‘ripping mothers from their children’
Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz noted that Trump torpedoed the Senate border security agreement that the Biden-Harris White House supported this year. Trump successfully pressured Republicans to vote against the compromise they reached with Democrats while campaigning on the issue.
“The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to protect our border is to rip mothers away from their children and some xenophobic signs at the Republican National Convention. He sank the bipartisan agreement on border security because, for Donald Trump, this was never about solutions just to solve a problem,” Munoz said in a statement. “Like everything with Donald Trump, it was never about helping the country, it was just about helping himself. There is only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that candidate is Vice President Harris.”
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, mocked the GOP attacks.
“That was never a term assigned to her. And the goal of her work was not necessarily the border or border politics, but rather root cause analysis, which she did successfully,” she said. “And I think it’s always important to point out Republican obstruction across the board when it comes to immigration or border policy.”
Since the bill failed in the Senate, Biden has taken executive action to crack down on asylum seeking. Last month, illegal border crossings fell to the lowest monthly number of his presidency, lower than in some months under Trump in 2019. Biden highlighted this in his address to the nation on Wednesday, saying that “the border crossings of border are lower today” than they were. in the Trump era.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
