Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Tuesday dismissed Republicans’ characterizations of Vice President Harris as the U.S. “border czar,” saying they’re the only ones who call her that.
Speaking to Steve Doocy on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Johnson noted Harris was tapped by President Biden to focus on the root causes of emigration from Central America, not to oversee border operations.
“She assumed the role that Vice President Biden had during the Obama administration, which is diplomacy with Central America. That is a role he had. He gave it to her. She is not the border czar. To the extent there is anybody who is a border czar, it’s the secretary of Homeland Security,” said Johnson, who ran the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2013 to 2017.
Early in the Biden administration, that assignment proved a fraught one for Harris, who struggled to shake the GOP’s border czar monicker.
She also angered some in the left with her first overseas trip as vice president, taking a simple message to would-be migrants in Mexico and Guatemala: “Do not come.”
In the following three years, Harris maintained the root causes portfolio but publicly emphasized her role in other policy areas, such as reproductive rights.
As the administration’s point person to address root causes of emigration from Central America, Harris focused on long-term investments to prop up the region’s economy.
Republicans are ramping up their “border czar” attacks on Harris now that she is the likely Democratic presidential nominee after Biden dropped out of the race Sunday.
In March, the administration announced $1 billion in private sector commitments to invest in the region: Since 2021, more than $5 billion has been pledged by public and private entities to promote economic growth in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Yet the immigration debate in the United States has focused on deterrence through border policies, an approach Johnson said is insufficient.
“The hard lesson I learned, Steve, from managing this problem is the push factors always overwhelm whatever defense you can put on the southern border. There are things we can do to enhance enforcement, to be lax on enforcement, that have an immediate short-term impact one way or the other,” Johnson said.
“But so long as those overwhelming push factors exist, they are going to keep coming and so you do — people don’t like to hear this, but you do have to address the problem at the source and fix our immigration system here, which is broken.”