Harris Didn’t Fail Her Border Task. But Did She Succeed?
Illegal immigration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is declining. Whether the vice president is responsible is more difficult to say.
Illegal immigration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is on the decline.
Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
In March 2021, two months after she and President Joe Biden took office, Vice President Kamala Harris was assigned the task of addressing the “root causes” of illegal immigration from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, aka the Northern Triangle. This is the job that some journalists and administration critics at the time dubbed “border czar.” That greatly overstated Harris’ role, but hey, if things had stayed quiet along the US-Mexico border over the past three-plus years, she’d probably be calling herself that, too.
Instead, it’s Republicans who keep using the term, for obvious reasons. The number of “Southwest border encounters” — people who are apprehended or turn themselves in to authorities after illegally crossing over from Mexico — hit new highs in 2022 and 2023 before starting to decline early this year.