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Dems Receive ‘Talking Points’ To Combat Harris’ ‘Border Czar’ Narrative

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Democrats have received a “talking points” memo to use in defense of Vice President Kamala Harris when confronted with her role as a failed “border czar” after years of chaos and record illegal crossings along the southern and northern U.S. borders, according to Fox News.

The report said an unnamed Democratic lawmaker who confirmed the memo told the outlet they were unsure who was responsible for its distribution. Fox obtained a copy of the memo, which was also posted to social media.

Among the talking points:

— Harris was never appointed “border czar”

— The title was “invented by Republicans” and the media

— Harris was never asked by Biden to lead immigration and border policy

— The VP was tasked with addressing the “root causes” of mass migration, with a focus on Central America

— Mass migration from “root causes” countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador has decreased

The memo comes as the issue of illegal immigration and migrants flooding American cities has become a top concern this election cycle.

The former Border Patrol union head claims that since President Joe Biden gave Vice President Kamala Harris the responsibility to address the underlying causes of illegal immigration in 2021, Harris has fallen short.

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“It’s very disappointing,” Brandon Judd, who recently retired as president of the Border Patrol Union, told Fox News. “We gave her the policies that she needed to implement. She refused to implement those.”

Judd’s remarks coincide with heightened scrutiny of Harris’s immigration and border security record in the days following Biden’s announcement that he would not be running for president and would instead support his vice president to succeed him. Critics claim Harris has fallen short on a key topic that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.

In response to opponents who had already pointed out the increased influx of migrants within months of Biden’s election, the president appointed Harris to head the administration’s campaign to counter migration in March 2021.

On the announcement day, the Associated Press reported that Harris was assigned to supervise diplomatic endeavors in the Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Officials from the administration told AP that Harris would be tasked with developing a long-term plan to address the underlying causes of migration from those nations, in addition to working to pressure those nations to tighten immigration laws and safeguard their own borders.

“The vice president has agreed – among the multiple other things that I have her leading, and I appreciate it – agreed to lead our diplomatic effort to work with those nations to accept returnees and enhance migration enforcement at their borders,” Biden said during the announcement.

“Needless to say, the work will not be easy,” Harris said at the time. “But it is important work.”

Fox News noted:

Later in 2021, Harris negotiated a memorandum of understanding with Mexico that saw the U.S. send $4 billion to help Central American countries address root causes of illegal migration, with private companies kicking in an extra investment of $5.2 billion to the cause.

But the vice president’s work on the issue quickly fizzled out, an NBC News report published Thursday revealed, noting that Harris visited Mexico in June 2021 to sign an agreement that resulted in $4 billion in direct assistance and $5.2 billion in private-public investment but has not visited the border or countries to its south since January 2022.

Since 2021, the Root Causes strategy has made no new commitments, the report notes.

Nevertheless, the share of attempted crossings by migrants from the Northern Triangle has dropped significantly since 2021. According to government statistics, migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador made up 41% of all Border Patrol apprehensions in 2021. That number dropped to 22% of crossings in fiscal 2023, the data shows.

Despite a decrease in crossings from the Northern Triangle, illegal crossings reached all-time highs in 2021, 2022, and 2023 as migrants from around the world made their way to the U.S. border.

More than 30,000 Chinese migrants were arrested for illegally crossing the southern border in 2023, according to government data.

Judd, who worked as the union chief for most of the current administration, said the issues Harris identified were not the reason behind spikes in crossings.

“The major problem is the root causes she identified: political instability, climate and crime,” Judd said. “That was the same under President Trump, yet we did not see an explosion in illegal immigration under the Trump administration.”

In 2018, the Trump administration experienced a surge in attempted crossings that eventually peaked in March 2019 at a 12-year high. As a result of the administration’s response to the rise, crossings steadily declined for the remainder of the year, a trend that picked up speed during the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak.

But under the present administration, Judd contended, those increases reached unprecedented heights because of the “magnet that [Harris] created, which is allowing people to be released into the United States.”

Harris has long advocated for more lax enforcement for undocumented migrants. While serving as California’s attorney general in 2015, she said an “undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”

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“I’m a career prosecutor. I’ve personally prosecuted everything from low-level offenses to homicides. Unfortunately, I know what crime looks like. I know what a criminal looks like who’s committing a crime. An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal,” Harris said, according to a report in Newsweek.

In a 2019 interview with NPR, while serving as a California U.S. senator, Harris said she disagreed “with any policy that would turn America’s back on people who are fleeing harm.”

“I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for,” Harris said. “And so, I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge.”

When asked during that debate if an immigrant should be deported if their only offense is being undocumented, Harris responded “no.”

“They should not be deported,” Harris said.

However, Judd pointed out that Harris still lacks an understanding of the root causes of the migration crisis.

“Nothing has changed from President Trump to this administration,” Judd said of the situation in Central and South America. “Political instability was still there, the crime was still there, and the climate hasn’t changed from Trump to this administration, yet illegal immigration has exploded. … She has not addressed any of the root causes, and she refuses to recognize what the actual root causes are.”

“If she would have dealt with what she identified, we would have less illegal immigration, but she didn’t even deal with those causes that she identified,” Judd said.

The New York Post highlighted several outlets last week that have now changed their reporting, claiming that Harris was never a “border czar.” They include Axios, Newsweek, and USA Today, among others.

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