Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy pressed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Vice President Kamala Harris’ handling of the border crisis Thursday.
Doocy read through a card being handed out to House Democrats that contained talking points about Harris and her role in handling the border crisis. President Joe Biden appointed Harris on March 24, 2021 to address the influx of immigrants coming from the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico.
“So, the first one says Vice President Harris was never appointed border czar. There has never been such a position, it doesn’t exist. Why are Democrats so sensitive about the vice president and the border?” Doocy asked.
“Why are Republicans so sensitive about actually not owning up to them getting in the way of a border deal? Why?” Jean-Pierre said. “Why won’t they own up to that? Why won’t they add up to the last president [who] told them not to move forward? It was a bipartisan deal, just right there, available to them, and they voted twice against it. Twice against it. Why are they so sensitive in actually moving forward and actually dealing on an issue that most Americans care about is dealing with what’s going on at the border.”
Jean-Pierre referred to the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which intended shut down the border if the week-long average of illegal entries exceeded 5,000 persons a day. Senate Republicans blocked the legislation on February 7, while House Republicans vowed the bill would be “dead on arrival.”
Doocy suggested Harris failed to address the root causes of migration, leading the crisis to be a major talking point ahead of the 2024 election. Jean-Pierre denied that Biden appointed Harris to be the “border czar,” and credited both the vice president and Biden for “taking action” to mitigate the border crisis.
“So yes, we are going to debunk the false characterization of the vice president. She was not the border czar, and it’s not just us. Independent fact checkers have said the same thing, that that did not exist and that that is not true,” Jean-Pierre replied.
Harris’ one-time visit to the border occurred 90 days after her appointment on June 25, 2021. The vice president made trips to Guatemala and Mexico before visiting the border in El Paso, Texas, where she visited a Border Patrol facility and a processing center.
The White House and the liberal media have denied reports of Harris being the “border czar,” stating she is assigned to solely address the root causes of migration.
Axios published an article on Wednesday titled, “Harris border confusion haunts her new campaign,” which received a community note on X to point out how the outlet used the “border czar” label for Harris in 2021. Axios reporter Shawna Chen published a piece in April 2021 titled, “Harris, appointed by Biden as ‘border czar,’ said she would be looking at the ‘root causes’ that drive migration.”
Illegal encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border exceeded a record 2.3 million in the 2022 fiscal year and over 2.4 million in the 2023 fiscal year, according to Customs and Immigration Enforcement. Encounters have risen above 1.8 million in the 2024 fiscal year thus far.
Six Democrats joined House Republicans Thursday in supporting a resolution to condemn Harris for her “failure to secure the United States border.”
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