Vice President Kamala Harris’ effort to tackle root causes of migration from Central America has yielded more than $4.2 billion in private sector commitments, but border crossings remain high amid mass migration in the Western Hemisphere.
In March 2021, during an influx of unaccompanied migrant children, President Joe Biden tasked Harris with overseeing diplomatic efforts with the Northern Triangle. At the time, most minors apprehended on the US southern border were from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras – a region where major hurricanes and the coronavirus pandemic took a devastating toll.
Republicans seized on the assignment, dubbing Harris the “border czar” – a title the White House rejected, arguing that her focus was on long-term fixes. And last year, as an affront to Harris, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, began busing migrants to her residence at the Naval Observatory.
Since being tasked with tackling root causes, Harris has only occasionally talked about the effort as the situation along the US-Mexico border became a political vulnerability for Biden. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, latched onto the issue from the outset of the new Congress, with plans to hold a congressional hearing on the matter just hours before the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.
A senior administration official recognized the attention on the US-Mexico border but maintained that Harris’ work is not intended to solve the immediate issues on the ground there.
“The vice president’s work and what we’re focused on this afternoon is thinking long term and getting at the root of the problem as the administration simultaneously addresses the immediate challenges at the border,” the senior administration official told reporters Monday.
In El Salvador, there’s been concern about limiting checks and balances in government,…
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