Multiple media outlets insisted Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t the “border czar” despite being put in charge of the border crisis when she took office, including Axios, which used that exact phrasing in its own past reporting.
Harris was tasked early on in the Biden administration with addressing the root causes of mass migration from Central and South America. That part of her portfolio has emerged as a cornerstone of GOP-led attacks against the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, as states across the country continue to struggle with the migrant crisis.
However, media outlets have suddenly taken issue with the “border czar” moniker that Republicans used to describe her role as Harris heads toward the Democratic White House nomination, suggesting it’s unfair to pin the thorny issue of illegal immigration on her.
Axios was particularly roasted over a piece that seemed to contradict its own pervious reporting.
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Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked early on in the Biden administration with addressing the root causes of mass migration from Central and South America. (REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/Pool)
“The Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had,” reporter Stef Kight wrote on Wednesday.
Critics pointed out Axios reported in 2021 that Harris was “appointed by Biden as border czar.” Another 2021 Axios report, by Kight herself, was headlined, “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.”
Axios did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Axios wasn’t the only news outlet to distance Harris from the “border czar” title.
TIME published a piece headlined, “Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar.’ Here’s What She Really Did,” which also downplayed the moniker.
“On her first foreign trip as Vice President in June 2021, Kamala Harris was tasked with delivering a blunt message in Guatemala City. ‘I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come,’ she said at a press conference, pausing for effect. ‘Do not come,’” TIME reported.
“Three years later, that sound bite may come to haunt Harris’ nascent presidential campaign. Despite her warning, border crossings reached historic highs during the Biden Administration,” TIME continued. “Republican critics cast the episode as a symbol of Harris’s ineffective tenure as President Biden’s ‘border czar,’ a misleading label they applied after she was charged with helming diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from Central America to the U.S.”
TIME then claimed “Harris was never put in charge of the border or immigration policy” and she was never “involved in overseeing law-enforcement efforts or guiding the federal response to the crisis.”
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A group of over 100 migrants attempting to enter the US illegally rush a border wall Thursday, March 21, 2024. In the process the migrants knock down Texas National Guardsmen before they are halted by the border wall. (James Breeden for New York Post / Mega)
“Her mandate was much narrower: to focus on examining and improving the underlying conditions in the Northern Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—which has been racked by decades of poverty, war, chronic violence, and political instability,” TIME reported. “It was the first high-profile assignment in Harris’ tenure as Vice President, and it was an especially thankless one.”
USA Today published a “fact check” headlined, “Harris’ border work was on ‘root causes’ of migration; she wasn’t in charge.” USA Today noted that Donald Trump Jr. said she was “in charge of the border” during the Biden-era immigration crisis.
“The post exaggerates the vice president’s role in addressing migration at the southern border. Harris was never put in charge of the border or made ‘border czar,’ immigration experts said. President Joe Biden tasked Harris with leading the administration’s diplomatic efforts addressing the “root causes” of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras,” USA Today wrote.
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Left-leaning fact-checker PolitiFact also got in on the action, calling a Republican claim about her being the border czar “mostly false,” and part of an effort to “link her” to her own administration’s immigration policy.
“Claims that President Joe Biden named Harris the ‘border czar’ and that she is responsible for overseeing U.S. border enforcement gained prominence at the Republican National Convention as the party sought to link her to his immigration policy,” PolitiFact wrote.
“Biden didn’t put Harris in charge of overseeing border security,” the fact-checking site wrote, citing one expert who said managing the border was under the domain of the Department of Homeland Security.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.