by Jason Hopkins
More than a million migrants from Central America have illegally crossed the border into the United States since Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed to address the illegal immigration crisis from the region.
Since the presidential campaign began, Harris and her allies have been vocal pushed away narrative that she had been appointed as the White House’s “border czar,” arguing that she had been given only a circumscribed role in addressing the “root causes” of illegal migration coming from Central America. Yet some 1.7 million people from the Northern Triangle region, which includes El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have flooded into the U.S. after she was tasked with easing the crisis.
“It’s total chaos at the border and it’s been going on for three and a half years,” retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the current situation at the border. “America is being put at risk for no reason, and they’re being deceived by nonsense that’s simply not true.”
Border Patrol agents deployed along the southern border encountered a total of 1,739,795 migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras attempting to cross the border illegally between April 2021 — Harris’ first full month as “border czar” — and June 2024. According to a review of the latest available data conducted by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“I asked her, the vice president, today — because she is the most qualified person to do this — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, and the countries that are helping — they are going to need help to stop so many people from moving, to stop the migration to our southern border,” Biden said. publicly announced on March 24, 2021
The president added that there is no one “better qualified” to do the job and said she would not need to contact him because “he knows what he is doing.”
“But — so, Madam Vice President, thank you. I gave you a tough assignment, and you’re smiling, but there’s no one better to try to organize this for us,” Biden continued.
Since that speech, there have been 253,027 undocumented migrants from El Salvador, 798,678 undocumented migrants from Guatemala, and 688,090 undocumented migrants from Honduras at the U.S.-Mexico border—more than 1.7 million encounters, according to CBP data. The numbers under Harris’ “border czar” exceed the approximately 1.098,000 Border Patrol apprehensions of those three nationalities recorded under Trump from fiscal year 2017 through fiscal year 2020. According to previous CBP data.
What has further exacerbated the immigration crisis in the Biden-Harris administration has been the influx of other foreign nationals who have used Central America as a stopover on their way to the U.S. border — most notably Venezuelans. While non-nationals in Central America have technically been exempt from the vice president’s oversight, the lack of border enforcement in the region has exacerbated the U.S. asylum crisis.
In fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol agents encountered fewer than 50,000 Venezuelan nationals, according to CBP data. That number rose to more than 187,000 in fiscal year 2022 and peaked at more than 200,600 in fiscal year 2023.
Venezuelans aren’t the only ones crossing the Central American region to illegally enter the U.S. In 2023 alone, more than half a million U.S.-bound migrants crossed the Darien Gap, a dense jungle that straddles the border between Panama and Colombia. According to Council on Foreign Relations
Illegal border crossings by non-US citizens have also increased under Harris, the “border czar,” in office.
There were fewer than 2,000 encounters with Chinese nationals at the southern border in fiscal year 2022, according to CBP data. That number skyrocketed to more than 24,000 in fiscal year 2023 and has already surpassed 33,000 this fiscal year, even though the year is not over yet.
Similar increases in illegal crossings of the southern border have been seen under the Biden-Harris administration among Indians, Turks, Nicaraguans, Russians and others.
Republicans have long criticized Harris for allegedly downplaying the border crisis and recently published surveys indicate that a majority of Americans believe they support “open borders.”
Harris, for her part, visited Central America in June 2021. and warned potential illegal migrants: “Don’t come. Don’t come.” She I also visited the U.S.-Mexico border once, in June 2021, after facing mounting pressure to do so.
Since Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, she has tried to portray herself as a tough prosecutor who will govern with border hawk tendencies. Her campaign released two different ads claiming he will “fix” the border crisis and hire more Border Patrol agents.
Harris has previously supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, but latest statements from her campaign suggest she has completely changed her position. It is also unclear whether her vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, still supports the sanctuary city policy.
“The truth is that Vice President Kamala Harris has always been pro-open borders. She can’t run away from that,” Joey Chester, communications manager for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement to DCNF.
Chester mentioned Harris’ past opposition for the border wall, rejection of further financing in the case of Border Patrol agents and detention facilities and prior support for DACA beneficiaries, compensation will be provided congress workers as reasons to be suspicious of her current rightward turn on border protection.
“These policies have proven disastrous and are deeply unpopular with the American people,” he added. “Words cannot change the fact that the current state of America’s borders and the influx of illegal immigrants into the United States is the work of President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
Harris’ campaign did not respond to DCNF’s request for comment.
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Jason Hopkins is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris. Photo “Southern Border” by Jan R. Modlin.
