And at a news conference on immigration, House Republicans used a milk carton with Harris’s picture on it as a prop. It read, “Missing at the border: Vice President Kamala Harris.”
“If she’s the vice president of the United States and the president put her in charge of this, Vice President Harris needs to go down to the border and see this for herself,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who recently traveled to the border with other Republicans. “Because maybe she would then encourage President Biden to reverse his policies that have failed.”
As the vice president wades into a new role addressing the root causes of migration out of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, Republicans are rushing to connect her to the surge in migrants at the border, losing few opportunities to use “Harris” and “border” in the same sentence, often with “czar.”
The GOP pile-on is an effort to link Harris to a policy that has confounded presidents of both parties for decades and threatens to overshadow Biden’s handling of other major issues. And it is a clear effort to hobble Harris, who is widely seen as a presidential aspirant and a potential heir to Biden, particularly if the 78-year-old decides not to seek reelection in 2024.
But the Republican effort also highlights the administration’s difficulty in defining Harris’s new role for the public. In a stream of news briefings, interviews and statements, the administration — and Harris herself — have struggled to make clear which problems Harris is trying to solve and what is outside her purview.
Harris’s mission, as directed by Biden, is to meet with heads of state and other officials to tackle the enduring problems, including poverty and violence, that spur people south of the U.S. border with Mexico to migrate to the United States. She is also being briefed by an array of experts on policies that affect the flow of migrants.
But administration officials, from the president down, have stressed that she is not responsible for dealing with the surge of migrants at the border, including the record number of unaccompanied minors.
That distinction might be lost on voters, however. And that may be what Republicans are counting on.
On Wednesday, after a meeting with immigration experts, Harris was asked whether she would visit the southern border. She twice explained that Biden has asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to address border issues and said that “he has been working very hard at that, and it’s showing some progress because of his hard work.”
Harris added that she had talked to the presidents of Guatemala and Mexico and that she planned to go to Guatemala “as soon as possible.”
“We also have to deal with the root causes, otherwise we are just in a perpetual system of only dealing with the symptoms,” Harris said.
Although Biden has received high marks for many of his policies, Republicans see a weakness in his stance on immigration. Biden’s approval rating stood at 59 percent amid his generally well-regarded handling of the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination efforts. And his administration was able to push a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief effort through Congress, putting $1,400 into the pockets of many Americans without any Republican support.
But the administration has struggled to contain a steep increase in migrant numbers at the country’s southern border, which has seen its biggest surge in two decades. The nation is on pace to receive as many as 2 million migrants this year, more than the population of Phoenix, the nation’s fifth-largest city. And critics have asked whether Biden’s reputation for leniency is motivating more people to take the risk of coming to the U.S. border.
Since the campaign, Biden has vowed to have an immigration policy that is more humane than his predecessor’s. Biden issued five executive orders on immigration on his first day. The administration also began allowing unaccompanied minors into the country, a departure from former president Donald Trump’s approach.
