Illegal migration tops list of headaches for Kamala Harris

The number of migrants reaching the US hit a 20-year high last month, denting the credibility of the Vice-President.

Joe Biden has handed migration issues over to Kamala Harris. Picture: AFP

The number of migrants reaching the US hit a 20-year high last month, denting the credibility of the Vice-President and possibly threatening her chances of one day making it to the Oval Office.

Stemming the numbers crossing the Mexican border is one of a series of hospital passes handed to Kamala Harris by her boss, Joe Biden, with political opponents ­increasingly seeing her as a lightning rod.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency said it caught 180,034 people, mostly single adults, trying to get into the country illegally last month. These are the people they know about, and whose applications to stay are considered once they arrive.

Republicans say the White House is soft on immigration and that the numbers are climbing ­because the administration has encouraged people to travel to America.

They have seized on Ms Harris’s refusal to go to the border and see the situation for herself; something Donald Trump will do this month, viewing it as an opportunity to make political capital.

The former president described the US-Mexican border as an “unmitigated disaster zone” this week. He will be joined on his visit by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has set aside $US250 million ($335m) to build “hundreds of miles” of the Mr Trump’s border wall.

“The border was far more under control under the Trump administration until President Biden came,” Mr Abbott said.

Repulican senator Ted Cruz from Texas has a counter on his Twitter account marking the number of days since Ms Harris was asked to resolve the problem. Sunday was day 89.

Ms Harris last week used her first foreign trip as Vice-President to try to persuade the governments of Guatemala and Mexico to stop migrants leaving home and heading for the US. The strategy may work in time, but so far it has borne little fruit.

She has not helped herself with some tepid media performances; something that was supposed to be a strength she brought to the administration.

“At some point, you know, we are going to the border,” she told a TV reporter during her trip to Guatemala. “We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border … we’ve been to the border.”

The interviewer interjected: “You haven’t been to the border.”

Harris replied: “And I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”

What made the performance even worse was the revelation a few days later that she had undergone a “comprehensive session” of media training in April. Her ­answers in the interview are said to have left the White House “perplexed”.

Migration is Ms Harris’s biggest headache but it is by no means the only difficult task handed to her by Mr Biden. Voting rights and the coronavirus vaccination program are among the other responsibilities in her bulging portfolio.

A YouGov poll last month put her favourability ratings at an anaemic 41 per cent; well below Mr Biden’s.

William McGurn, chief speechwriter to president George W. Bush, says Harris’s problems are of Biden’s making. “Her critics are having a field day. But what in heaven’s name can she say?” Mr McGurn wrote in a column for The Wall Street Journal.

“Yes, vice-presidents are often assigned the tough sells. It’s also true that a president Harris would likely have done the same thing Mr Biden did. But “root causes”, to which Ms Harris turns whenever she’s asked about the border, is what you say when you know that what you’re doing isn’t going to work, the implication being that it really can’t be fixed at all.”

Away from tricky policy areas, she is being hailed as a breath of fresh air in Washington. She hosted an Instagram-able dinner at her residence for female members of the Senate, Democrats and ­Republicans alike, and her ­appearance at last weekend’s Pride march in the capital was lauded by liberals.

But this is her audition for the top job, and with a 78-year-old President that may come sooner rather than later, despite Mr Biden’s insistence that he will serve two terms. She may have to start marking up some big successes quickly.

The Times