Vice President Kamala Harris was never the “border czar.” If you’ve kept up with the media lately, you might have noticed that the commentariat seems intent on clarifying that. Axios, among others, recently “clarified” their reporting on Harris’ border mismanagement and disavowed their previous use of the “border czar” title. Given Axios’s key role in fostering a DNC coup against a sitting president, we can interpret that Democrats recognize the scope of their failure on the southwestern border and want to distance themselves from the consequences.
The consequences of the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies are well known and well documented. Violence on both sides of the border, record drug overdoses, and strained public institutions have marked a half-decade of utter chaos. The monotony of endless alien crossings and drug seizures obscures the transformational nature of the crisis, rendering the southwest a pot of boiling frogs.
It’s not a shock that the Democrats have decided to distance Harris from her time overseeing aspects of the administration’s border response. But with the Democratic National Convention underway, conservatives are obliged to review Harris’s failures on the border and communicate the consequences of these failures to the electorate.
Harris was tapped to front the Biden administration’s signature border policy, the so-called “root cause” strategy, in March of 2021. She was placed in charge of “leading the administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” At the time, Biden emphatically endorsed Harris as the woman for the job, even going as far as deputizing her to negotiate in his name: “When she speaks, she speaks for me. Doesn’t have to check with me. She knows what she’s doing, and I hope we can move this along.”
Despite the Biden White House’s typical bravado, the “root cause” strategy was seemingly a response to the administration being caught with its pants down. The string of controversies and leaks from the White House in the aftermath of the early Biden border announcements stand as evidence of the administration’s dilemma. After a half-decade of demonizing border enforcement as fascism, the Biden White House quickly dismantled the border enforcement framework left to them by the Trump administration in February 2021. Through a myriad of international deals, stepped-up enforcement, and creative use of authority granted to the executive to combat Covid-19, the Trump administration brought illegal migration to record lows in 2020. Dismantling such a carefully crafted framework was sure to have catastrophic consequences, but the White House pressed ahead regardless. The ongoing catastrophe began to unfold within weeks of the administration’s actions.
Hellbound and Down 