No, Kamala Harris wasn't the "border czar."
Here's what she did: https://t.co/1mdqTm4Zgx
— TIME (@TIME) July 23, 2024
On her first foreign trip as Vice President in June 2021, Kamala Harris was tasked with delivering a blunt message in Guatemala City. “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come,” she said at a press conference, pausing for effect. “Do not come.”
Three years later, that sound bite may come to haunt Harris’ nascent presidential campaign. Despite her warning, border crossings reached historic highs during the Biden Administration. Republican critics cast the episode as a symbol of Harris’s ineffective tenure as President Biden’s “border czar,” a misleading label they applied after she was charged with helming diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from Central America to the U.S.
“Kamala had one job,” Nikki Haley told the crowd at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week. “One job. And that was to fix the border. Now imagine her in charge of the entire country.”