Why Republicans Keep Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar’

As Democrats tangle over the re-election prospects of President Biden, Republicans at their national convention this week have trained some of their most intense criticism on Vice President Kamala Harris.

They have tied her to an administration that they say has led to increases in crime and inflation. They have cast her an enabler of an aging and ineffective president. They have blamed her for record levels of migrant crossings at the border.

But perhaps no phrase has been deployed more than this one: “border czar.”

“Kamala Harris isn’t able to do any job. She was appointed border czar,” said Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida on Wednesday to a couple of snickers in the audience. “Appointing Kamala Harris to oversee the border is like appointing Bernie Madoff to oversee your retirement plan.”

But Ms. Harris was not, in fact, appointed border czar, nor was she tasked with addressing the broader problems plaguing the border itself, where minors have at times slept on the floors of overcrowded facilities fordays beyond the legal limit. Rather she was deputized by President Biden with the diplomatic mission of solving the “root causes” of migration from countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, tackling the issues that spur people to flee in the first place, like drug violence and lack of economic opportunity.

It was the same politically unsavory task that former President Barack Obama delegated to Mr. Biden when he served as Mr. Obama’s vice president. And it’s a task that has only become harder — and more politically polarized — since then, becoming perhaps the thorniest issue facing the Biden-Harris administration.

Brian Fallon, campaign spokesman for Ms. Harris, said former President Donald J. Trump and his party