Trump’s Legacy And GOP Obstruction: The Real Causes of the Border Crisis
Thanks to a handful of billionaires, Trump and his (illegally) coordinated PACs, the Republicans have been inundating the airwaves in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada and Minnesota with ads blaming Kamala for the border crisis (and to other aspects of Biden’s record they’re demonizing him— now her— for, like the Trump inflation.
House Republicans, with the help of 6 gutless right-wing Democrats— Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME), Mary Peltola (Blue Dog-AK), Don Davis (Blue Dog-NC), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Blue Dog-WA) and Yadira Caraveo (New Dem-CO)— set the scene for the ad campaign by passing Elise Stefanik’s “strong” condemnation of “the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris', failure to secure the United States border.”
Down-ballot, Republican candidates are running similarly deceitful ads implying that the Trump border crisis was invented by Kamala. The problem with Stefanik’s and the Blue Dogs’ condemnation and these ads is that Kamala never was the “border czar.” On Thursday, Forbes explained Kamala’s actual role in the immigration conundrum that Trump left the Biden administration. “Biden,” wrote Alison Durkee, “tapped Harris in March 2021 to lead a much more narrow diplomatic effort to curb migration from the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries— Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador— and address the root causes for why residents there immigrate to the U.S. in the first place, along with enhancing other countries’ borders that those migrants travel through along the way before they get to the U.S. She was never tasked with managing border security in the U.S., which is under the purview of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who said in June 2021 Harris is ‘leading our nation’s efforts to address the root causes— that fundamental question of why people leave their homes,’ while he is ‘address[ing] the security and management of our border.’”
Harris has led efforts on addressing those root causes, particularly in getting private sector investment in the region to improve its economy—which the White House said in March had created 250,000 jobs—with Honduran Minister of Investment Miguel Medina telling CNN that working with major companies is “not something that is accessible to a normal company in Honduras” without U.S. involvement, and “if it wasn’t for this being moved from the White House, there’s … no way we could have had the success” the initiative on private sector investment has had.
Addressing the root causes of migration is something that by nature will take longer to bear fruit than more immediate efforts to stop migrants at the border— so it’s harder to see how Harris’ work has had an impact— with Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, telling TIME that while the VP did “reasonably well” in working with the private sector, her assignment is one “that could not produce results anytime soon.”
Immigration levels from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have gone down in the years since Harris’ assignment began, with data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) showing encounters with migrants from those three countries have dropped from approximately 700,000 in 2021 to 500,000 in 2023— while encounters with migrants from other countries outside Harris’ purview, like Colombia, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela have gone up.
So… these Stefanik-led GOP attacks on Kamala over the border crisis are not only misleading but also hypocritical. As the GOP mislabels Harris as the “border czar,” they conveniently ignore the real causes of the current immigration challenges— causes that lie squarely at the feet of Señor T and the Republican Party. The Trumpanzee regime left a legacy of chaos and inhumanity at the border. Policies like family separation and “Remain in Mexico” created humanitarian disasters, while Trump’s stupid decision to cut aid to Central American countries worsened the conditions driving people to flee. It is these root causes of migration that Kamala has been working to address, not managing border security.
Meanwhile, the GOP’s obdurate obstructionism has consistently blocked comprehensive immigration reform, preferring instead to use partisan fear-mongering and xenophobia as political tools. Their criticisms of Kamala and purely political and ignore her efforts to foster private sector investments in Central America, which have already started to show promising results in job creation and economic stability— efforts that naturally take time to bear fruit. The Republican approach— focused on punitive measures and militarization— has failed to address the humanitarian and economic dimensions of immigration. Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress oppose genuine solutions that would enhance border security and management, preferring instead to perpetuate a crisis they can exploit politically.
Let’s take MAGA shill Derrick Van Orden. I spoke with Eric Wilson, his progressive opponent, today. He told me that Van Orden “shouldn’t worry about anybody’s record on the border except his. Derrick squandered the opportunity to lead on the issue. He voted against the bipartisan immigration bill because his master, Trump, said so. He has done nothing to help. It’s clear he should step aside for people actually willing to do something about the border.” If you want to help Eric flip this seat in Wisconsin’s swing district, here’s the place.
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