By T. Jayani, JadeTimes News
Donald Trump’s first television ad targeting Kamala Harris focuses on what his campaign views as her greatest vulnerability: immigration. The ad opens by identifying Harris as "America’s border tsar," accompanied by footage of her dancing, followed by a series of statistics that the Trump campaign attributes to her role in managing the border crisis a responsibility given to her by President Joe Biden shortly after his inauguration. The video cites figures such as 10 million illegal border crossings and 250,000 fentanyl related overdose deaths, concluding with the message, “Kamala Harris , failed, weak, dangerously liberal.”
The Harris campaign dismissed the ad, accusing the former president of resorting to “his trademark lies.” It’s not surprising that the Trump campaign would focus on Harris as the “failed border tsar,” blaming her for the high number of undocumented immigrants at the U.S. southern border a top issue for American voters this year as they prepare to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Following this initial ad, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have repeatedly labeled Harris the “failed border tsar,” linking her to the overwhelming images of migrants crossing the Rio Grande or squeezing under razor wire into the U.S. Critics argue that Harris should have found a solution over the past four years. However, the term “border tsar” is contested, with allies and former officials who worked with Harris emphasizing that she was not tasked with policing the border.
Ricardo Zuniga, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, clarified that Harris’s role was never about border enforcement but about addressing the root causes of migration. In early 2021, President Biden assigned Harris the challenging task of dealing with the “root causes” of Central American migration. At the time, people were fleeing violence, economic instability, and environmental disasters in the Northern Triangle Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. While the ultimate goal was to reduce the number of people arriving at the U.S. border, Biden never referred to Harris as the “border tsar.”
Despite this, the assignment was widely perceived as all encompassing, with media organizations, including us, referring to Harris as a “tsar.” Some commentators in Central America and Mexico questioned her qualifications, given her lack of experience in Latin American affairs.
The task Harris was given was daunting and largely thankless, requiring significant resources and cross party cooperation to address the deep seated economic and political issues in Central America something that’s in short supply in Washington, particularly on immigration matters. Zuniga, who previously led U.S. diplomacy in the Northern Triangle, acknowledges the Biden administration’s efforts in the region, noting that Harris helped secure $5 billion from the private sector for job creation and entrepreneurship. Harris also established a Central American corruption task force during her visit to Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021.
However, her message to prospective migrants “Do not come. If you come to our border, you will be turned back” is what many remember most. Despite her warnings, millions ignored them, and by December 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection CBP had encountered 300,000 undocumented immigrants at the southern border.
Many local officials along the border are critical of Harris’s work in Central America. Douglas Nicholls, the Republican Mayor of Yuma, Arizona, argues that whatever Harris was doing diplomatically had little impact on the ground, pointing to record numbers of migrants overwhelming his city.
Others, like Ricardo Barrientos of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, believe the funds Harris helped raise were insufficient to counter the major incentive driving migration remittances sent home by Central American migrants, which totaled $37 billion last year.
Katie Tobin, who worked on immigration at the White House, contends that Harris’s efforts have been unfairly “misconstrued and painted in a bad light.” She credits Harris for a significant decrease in migration from Central America 72% between March 2021 and June 2024.
Ultimately, opinions on Harris’s record may be split along party lines. In recent months, the overall number of undocumented migrants has significantly decreased, partly due to an executive order from President Biden allowing the deportation of migrants in the U.S. illegally without processing their asylum requests, and the creation of more legal pathways into the U.S.
Harris defends her record by pointing to Trump’s resistance to achieving a bipartisan immigration reform deal. In February, after intense negotiations, lawmakers reached a deal, but Republican leaders, at Trump’s urging, blocked it to prevent a win for the Biden administration.
Despite these defenses, critics like Mayor Nicholls remain unconvinced, recalling how the Trump administration provided immediate resources during a crisis. He argues that Trump’s actions represented “effective leadership on the border.”
Still, Tobin suggests that the Harris campaign needs to more actively discuss her work on immigration to counter Republican narratives. In response to Trump’s first ad, the Harris campaign released ads of their own, focusing on Trump’s opposition to immigration reform and highlighting her previous work as California’s attorney general, where she prosecuted cartels and drug traffickers.
It remains uncertain whether this new approach will be enough for Harris to shed the “failed border tsar” label, as Republicans are likely to continue using it against her leading up to the election.
