Harris took the reins to solve a key region's immigration crisis: Nearly 1.8 million people crossed into the U.S. anyway

More than a million migrants from Central America have crossed into the United States illegally since Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped to address the region's illegal immigration crisis.

Since launching his presidential campaign, Harris and his allies have done so vehemently pushed back on the narrative that she was appointed to serve as “border czar” in the White House, arguing that she was given only a limited role in addressing the “root causes” of illegal migration from Central America . However, approximately 1.7 million people from the Northern Triangle region, which includes El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, flooded into the US after it was tasked with mitigating the crisis.

“It's total chaos at the border, and it has been for the last three and a half years,” retired Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the current border situation. “The United States is put at risk for no reason and is sold an invoice that is not true.”

Border Patrol agents deployed to the southern border encountered a total of 1,739,795 migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras attempting to cross into the country illegally between April 2021, the first full month of Harris as “border tsar,” and in June 2024. seconds a review of the latest data available from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“I've asked her today, the vice president, because she's the most qualified person to do that, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that are helping, they're going to need help to slow the movement of so many people. people, curbing migration at our southern border,” Biden publicly declared on March 24, 2021.

The president added that there was no one “better qualified” to take on the task and said he should not consult with him because he “knows what he's doing.”

“But then, Madam Vice President, thank you. I gave you a tough job and smile, but there's no one better able to try to organize this for us,” Biden continued.

Since that speech, 253,027 illegal migrants from El Salvador, 798,678 illegal migrants from Guatemala, and 688,090 illegal migrants from Honduras have descended on the US-Mexico border, totaling more than '1.7 million encounters, according to CBP data. The numbers under Harris' “border czar” tenure top the roughly 1,098,000 Border Patrol apprehensions of those three nationalities seen under the Trump administration from FY 2017 to FY 2020 seconds previous CBP data.

Further exacerbating the immigration crisis under the Biden-Harris administration was the influx of other foreign nationals who have used Central America as a way station to the US border, most notably Venezuelans. While non-Central Americans were technically not under the vice president's purview, the lack of border enforcement in the region has sparked the US asylum crisis.

Border Patrol agents encountered fewer than 50,000 Venezuelan nationals in fiscal year 2021, according to CBP data. That number increased to more than 187,000 in fiscal year 2022 and peaked at more than 200,600 in fiscal year 2023.

Venezuelans are far from the only ones crossing the Central American region on their journey to enter the US illegally. More than half a million migrants bound for the United States crossed the Darien Gap, a dense jungle that straddles the border of Panama and Colombia, in 2023 alone, seconds the Foreign Relations Council

Illegal border crossings by other nationalities have also exploded under the tenure of “border czar” Harris.

According to CBP Data, there were fewer than 2,000 encounters with Chinese nationals at the southern border in fiscal year 2022. That number exploded to more than 24,000 in fiscal year 2023 and has already surpassed 33,000 this fiscal year, although the year is not over yet.

Similar spikes in illegal southern border crossings occurred under the Biden-Harris administration by Indians, Turks, Nicaraguans, Russians and other nationalities.

Republicans have long hammered Harris for allegedly not taking the border crisis seriously and recently published surveys indicate that most Americans believe he is in favor of “open borders.”

For his part, Harris visited Central America in June 2021 and warned would-be illegal migrants: “Don't come. Don't come.” she also visited the US-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 cast herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor who would govern with borderline hawkish tendencies. Your campaign is out two different ads claiming it would “fix” the border crisis and hire more Border Patrol agents.

Harris previously supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, however last statements from his campaign suggest that he has completely changed his position. It was also not immediately clear whether his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, remains a supporter of sanctuary city policies.

“The truth is that Vice President Kamala Harris has always stood for open borders. She can't run away from that,” Joey Chester, communications manager for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement on DCNF.

Chester listed Harris' past opposition to a border wall, rejection of further funding for Border Patrol agents and detention beds, and previous support for DACA recipients to be compensated as congressional employees as reasons to suspect his current pivot to the right in border enforcement.

“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 aliens into America today is the work of President Biden and Vice President Harris.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

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