The White House called the Biden administration’s immigration and border policy the “Biden-Harris” policy — despite Vice President Kamala Harris’s belated attempt to distance herself from the worst failure of her four years.
Back in 2021, the @WhiteHouse was proudly calling @JoeBiden‘s awful immigration policy the “Biden-Harris” policy. pic.twitter.com/xixdreO2fA
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) August 13, 2024
It is true that Harris’s primary focus was to be implementing what Biden called the “root causes strategy.” At the time, the focus was the so-called “Northern Triangle” — Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador — where most migrants were coming from. But Harris clearly understood that her responsibility extended to migration as a whole — perhaps because the flow of migrants primarily came from that area. Over time, migrants began coming from everywhere.
It is no defense to say that she was just focused on three countries; had she done her job with those three countries, the problem would not have expanded. In addressing “root causes,” she neglected the basic problem, and arguably made it worse: namely, that the Biden-Harris administration was not prepared to enforce border security, nor was it prepared to pursue illegal migrants internally and to deport them back to their countries of origin at any large scale.
The centrality of the Northern Triangle, and of Harris’s “whole-of-govenrment approach” role, was expressed in a press statement by National Security Advisor (and Russia “collusion” hoaxer) Jake Sullivan in April 2021:
President Biden has asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the Administration’s work on our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, a testament to the importance this administration places on improving conditions in the region. The Vice President is overseeing a whole-of-government approach supported by outstanding public servants across the interagency including Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, who were tasked by the President at the beginning of the administration to rebuild our immigration system.
Harris also discussed the issue of “irregular migration” as a whole with the president of Mexico — which was not one of the major countries of origin for migrants, but the one they passed through: “The Vice President underscored that addressing irregular migration to our shared border is a top priority for the Biden-Harris Administration.”
“Root causes” in the Northern Triangle were not incidental to the policy; they were at the center of the Biden-Harris policy. Harris’s name was on it, and sought credit for it — until it failed, as it was doomed to fail, given that neither Biden nor Harris placed any emphasis on securing the U.S. border, enforcing immigration law, or deportations.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.