Here's The Real Story Of Kamala Harris On Immigration

It would be wrong to say the attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris’ record as “border czar” began the moment Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 campaign.

That’s because the attacks began long ago.

Ever since a spring 2021 White House meetingwhen Biden announced he was asking Harris to take the lead on a major immigration initiative, the vice president has been the face of the administration’s response to migration at the Southern border. As crossings have surged, Harris has taken the blame for policies that Republican lawmakers ― and many voters ― say have been a disaster.

You can see the toll on her reputation in a late July YouGov poll : Just 30% of voters said they trusted her over Donald Trump on immigration. And Republicans are hard at work making sure that reputation sticks.

“As a result of her dangerously extreme immigration policies, the largest invasion in history is now taking place at our southern border,” Trump said on a Tuesday conference call for reporters.

The day before, the Republican National Committee had distributed a press release and video of the 2021 White House meeting. “Here is the moment Biden crowned Kamala ‘border czar’ in 2021,” the RNC posted on its official X (formerly Twitter) account.

But if you actually watch that video, you’ll notice something: Biden never called Harris a “border czar,” or even implied she’ll be taking the lead for administration policy. As the full meeting transcript makes clear, he was simply tapping Harris to work with foreign governments, businesses and local organizations on the “root causes” of migration from the “ Northern Triangle ” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

“She was not in charge of what happened at the U.S.-Mexico border. She was