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Harris on a visit to one of the world's more secure borders in South Korea. (Credit: SeongJoon Cho Getty Images)
For days now, US politics has been roiled by an incredible rumour, mentioned in the middle of last week’s presidential debate: migrants in Springfield, Ohio are kidnapping and eating cats, dogs and even geese at local ponds. The two parties have reacted in familiar ways. Republicans fell into hysterics, playing up the cartoonish depiction of Haitians as wild dog-eaters; Democrats, in turn, gleefully mocked their opponents as racist fearmongers. Lost amid the partisan furore, however, is any mention of a solution to the perennial problem facing the US: an uncontrolled border and a desperately flawed immigration system, which neither conservatives nor progressives ever came close to fixing.
Critics from the centre-left may be right to fault Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for “creating stories”, but they are yet to articulate how they would improve the flailing status quo. Kamala Harris may assert that Trump “doesn’t have a plan”, but it is the Democrats who have fallen short in this respect, despite their best efforts to pivot to the Right on the issue. It begs the question: what can Harris do, beyond her usual rhetorical acrobatics, to reclaim the border issue from Republicans once and for all?
The solution has to go beyond the realm of policy to win over voters. Rather than simply coming up with yet another wonkish 10-point plan, Democrats must figure out a way to convince both the American public and themselves that the border must be defended, that ordinary citizens are right to be concerned, and that order and predictability in the immigration system are positive goods.
First, it is important to establish an honest account of what’s gone wrong over the last eight years. For there can be no resolution to the border crisis without acknowledging that Trump and Biden together share the blame. But where to begin? There can be no hiding from the fact that the Biden era witnessed the worst upticks in irregular migration in recent history, with more than 10 million encounters at the southern border according to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This amounts to a 1,240% increase since 2021 and a backlog of more than 591,000 individuals in the shambolic CBP app’s mass parole programme. All the while, a misguided strategy of documenting those crossing the border — or “managing the flow” — as opposed to trying to halt the flow of irregular arrivals has resulted in a virtual open invitation to economic migrants from Central America and elsewhere to crowd the US asylum system.
Harris should start by admitting the failures of her own party. In 2021, she was made Biden’s spokesperson on the border. But she was hardly the “border czar” the GOP make her out to be. The role gave her little to no actual responsibility over policymaking, which remained in the hands of DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. So rather than pretending her stint in the job was a success, she could admit that the present course is wrong and unsustainable. This would go a long way toward distancing herself from the Biden record — something she has already begun to do in other policy areas.
Indeed, given the Republican’s consistent failings on immigration, Harris does not have to stay on the defensive. The most remarkable aspect of tracing the volume and trajectory of irregular migration flows to the US is not the cleavages but rather the continuities between the Biden and Trump administrations. Contrary to the former president’s claims of presiding over the “lowest illegal immigration in recorded history”, Trump’s four years in office saw an effective decrease in deportations from the Obama era according to data collected by Pew Research. As the Houston Chronicle reported in 2020, near the end of the Trump era: “Barack Obama’s ICE arrested and deported more than twice as many people during his first term in office.”
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SubscribeWTH is the author talking about? These stats are easily accessible. Border encounters from 2007 to 2020 were under 500,000 every year, with the exception of a spike in 2019 to 800,000. Since then, border encounters have shot through the roof, to more than 2 million in 2022. This is the last year stats are available, but we know they were even higher in 2023 and 2024.
And what’s up with the term irregular migrants? It makes it sound like illegal aliens have irritable bowel syndrome.
The young aparatchik is trying to impress the party. That he isvpushig contrived, anti-factual nonsense is because the facts support none of the narrative he is,spinning out of whole cloth..
Yes indeed. It’s called obfuscation, and it’s a very deliberate and effective way to quell the useful idiots.
But Trump left office in January 2021, well after the increase in the number of “encounters”.
A fun and useful exercise is to visit archive(dot)org to look up website snapshots that were taken on the day US news articles were actually published.
On March 24 and March 25, 2021, US news articles are quite clear that President Joe Biden placed Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of overseeing and securing the Southern Border of the US. It was her signature role in the Biden administration at the time.
As an ABC News article (from the above date) stated about Kamala’s new border role in the Biden Administration:
With this point cleared up, perhaps we should measure Kamala’s actual performance, and ask her why the southern border crisis has deteriorated on her watch and under her command? Or is this too much to ask for?
Oh man, I was kind of having a rough day, but this article really cheered me up. Nothing like a good laugh to chase the blues away!
Typical democrat denialism. The reports of pets and park animals being caught and eaten is true. Instead the democrat denials paints a delusional picture pretending that the border invasion, enabled by Harris, was somehow not her actual strategy. Invasions are not accidental.
Just like catching ducks out of a park, or the neighbor’s cat, cooking it and eating it, is not an accident.
Carry on, endlessly repeating this nonsense will lose Trump the election.
I’m afraid you are missing the point here. Okay, some pets were eaten by immigrants. That is obviously not something we want, but it’s a far cry from something a former president (or anyone) should bring up in a presidential debate the way he did. It was desperate and silly, and ought to be laughed at, even if it eventually turned out to be true.
My normal disclaimer that I prefer Trump over Harris, but the guy just can’t control himself when he needs to.
“Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and half years…” so too could Harris retort “Why hasn’t he done it? Where is that ‘big, beautiful’ wall that Mexico was going to pay for?”
It was my impression that the Biden administration stopped it. These sort of articles are really quite loose with facts and objectivity.
Let’s not get facts and objectivity get in the way of a good wishful thinking session.
I see Mike is still running the same old comedy routine! He even got in the comments last time for some quality ranting and raving!
https://unherd.com/2022/12/biden-can-win-on-immigration/
Wow, that’s a real eye-opener, thanks for the link. (I wasn’t a subscriber back then.)
The sheer real-world denying idiocy of the Harris agenda being played out in this article and by this author defies description. To utilise one of the farmyard references from that earlier Comments section:
“Pigs might fly”.
Tetchy little fellow, is he not?
The idea that Harris will do anything “clever” or even anything at all seems like a triumph of optimism over reality. The woman can’t seem to even put a decent sentence together or answer tough questions in interviews (to which she has to be accompanied by Tim Walz as a kind of comfort blanket).
This is drivel
This article is an object lesson in pointless gaslighting. Does this guy really think he can convince us that Biden and Harris did not deliberately open the US southern border to allcomers. The numbers speak for themselves.
There are police reports and eyewitness accounts of Haitians’ killing park animals and stealing cats. Given that they practice voodoo that involves animal sacrifice, there is nothing “hysterical” about it.
My friend’s parents have been missionaries in Haiti for over 30 years. Maybe Cuenco would like to speak with those who have some experience with those islanders. Or just ask Dominicans why they keep such tight control over their border.
As for Harris, she just does what she’s told, and she does it inappropriately guffawing out a nasal word salad.
I sometimes think that Mr. Cuenco writes this drivel simply to sit back and get his jollies off the comments section. Or he is the nephew of someone powerful somewhere on the earth. Unherd should file these “reports” under the fiction section.
You write:
“First, it is important to establish an honest account …..” and yet a couple of paragraphs later “In 2021, she was made Biden’s spokesperson on the border. But she was hardly the “border czar” the GOP make her out to be. ”
maybe you should take your own damn advice – let’s establish an HONEST ACCOUNT.
Harris was put in charge of stemming the flow of migrants at the US southern border. Every media organisation, from right across the political spectrum, referred to her appointment as the Border Czar. No one at the White House, of the VP’s office sought to correct that. They were happy to see kamala being given a substantive role.
Many of those same media organisations have since tried to back away from their earlier descriptions of the role, when it became poltically expedient to try and absolve Kamala of the blame for the WOEFUL job she did, but we have the receipts.
You are perfectly entitled to your own opinions, but NOT your own facts.
If only I hadn’t read the news in 2021, at which time I was informed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that Vice President Harris was tasked by President Biden to oversee this very issue as part of the Biden Administration.
If only….
From NBC News on March 24, 2021:
“WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he has appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead efforts to stem migration across the U.S.-Mexico border, as the administration faces growing political pressure to address a surge in undocumented migrant children unaccompanied by parents.
“Biden said during an immigration meeting at the White House that he had asked Harris to lead the administration’s efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, countries that will ‘need help stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.’…
“Harris, seated by Biden’s side, echoed the assessment. ‘There is no question that this is a challenging situation,’ she said.
“Harris said she planned to work with a number of stakeholders including the private sector, civil society and members of Congress who share the administration’s interest in addressing the root causes of migration.
“For weeks, the White House has declined to say whether Harris would be given a specific policy portfolio, instead insisting that Biden and Harris were full governing partners and would tackle issues in tandem. Wednesday’s announcement marks the first high-profile policy initiative Harris will take on as vice president.
“‘Biden has said over and over again that ‘the person I trust most, the person I turn to when there’s a hard issue, is Kamala Harris,’ another senior administration official said, adding that Biden thought Harris’ experience dealing with organized crime and human rights issues as attorney general of California would be beneficial to the role.
“In an interview with CBS earlier Wednesday, Harris said that she and Biden would ‘absolutely’ visit the border sometime soon.
“‘We need to deal with what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and address it in a way that is about not only diplomacy, but bringing our allies together,’ she said, acknowledging that the current overcrowding of migrant children in border facilities was a ‘huge problem.’
“’Look, we’ve been in office less than 100 days. We are addressing it. We’re dealing with it. But it’s going to take some time.’ Harris said. ‘And are we frustrated? Are you frustrated? Yes. We are.’”
Given her scant understanding of geography might be a challengr.
Please stop. Kamala WAS ALREADY THE BORDER CZAR. For nearly four years. The results of her “work” are self-evident. Nothing was done to police the border other than fling the doors wide open and letting in anyone who could walk across. Don’t try comparing her to Trump. Trump’s idea of a wall was attacked at every turn. He was accused of creating the cages that, in fact, were built under Obama.
A novel wing of “Border Democrats” could then emerge to take up the pro-immigration control arguments of heterodox Democratic leaders
This is pure fantasy dressed up as deep thought. If such a group of Dems existed, it had plenty of time to surface. One blue city after another is screaming about the impact of illegals on its budget. Are Congressional Dems deaf to those cries or are they okay with the damage being done? This pervasive idea among certain contributors that a woman who has done nothing but exacerbate problems on her watch will suddenly fix them if elected is a peculiar strain of TDS.
All I can say is ‘wow’. This poor man is so pitifully misinformed, as to challenge belief. Biden/Harris succeeded magnificently at opening the border while pretending to do otherwise. “The border is secure” was uttered by both Harris and Mayorkas, knowing that a compliant media wouldn’t expose the obvious. Biden’s executive orders drastically amended Trump policies relating to asylum and the Return to Mexico policy with the calculated intent to bring in as many future Democrat voters as fast as possible. Before he was elected, he promised to curtail deportations. Team Biden also allowed/encouraged the establishment of NGOs that would facilitate the incursion of ever more illegals. I know Trump has sent a lot of mean tweets, but the Trump border actually was the best managed in decades.
Well I was thinking of going to Springfield with my cat, but now I don’t know with all those cat and dog eating Haitians around, it may be safer in Oakland. Btw how come Trump no longer wants to build the wall, that was the only intelligent thing he had to say in 2016