Kamala’s bad trip

Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on her first foreign trip since taking office this week — and quickly proved herself to be as empty as the faces on the royally-iced cookies she handed out to reporters on Air Force Two. President Biden’s ‘border czar’ traveled to Guatemala and Mexico in a futile attempt to solve an autogenic crisis and insulted the intelligence of each country’s leaders and the American people along the way.

It seems even Harris’s plane knew the disaster that would unfold if she made it to Central America, developing a ‘technical issue’ to keep the Vice President grounded. Unfortunately for all of us, she was undeterred, switching planes to continue on her journey. A group of protesters greeting Harris in Guatemala opted for more literal warning signs that read, ‘Kamala, Mind Your Own Business’, ‘Trump Won’ and ‘Go Home.’ Even the Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei got his shots in, reminding everyone that the Biden administration is to blame for the surge of migrants heading to the US-Mexico border.

‘We asked the United States government to send more of a clear message to prevent more people from leaving,’ Giammattei said. ‘The message changed too: “We’re going to reunite families, we’re going to reunite children.” The very next day, the coyotes were here organizing groups of children to take them to the United States.’

He is correct. Biden and Harris spent the campaign lambasting then-president Donald Trump’s so-called ‘assault on the dignity of immigrant communities’ and vowing to undo his many edicts supporting a secure border. Biden then ended the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, also known as the Remain-in-Mexico policy, which required asylum-seekers to wait for their cases to be adjudicated in Mexico rather than being released into the United States. He ended the safe third-country agreements with northern triangle countries that required migrants to declare asylum in the first country they entered, rather than waiting until they reached the United States. He halted border-wall construction and issued a 100-day moratorium on deportations. The result? Illegal border crossings have reached their highest level in decades with four months still remaining in the fiscal year.

According to the Texas Tribune, nearly 40 percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended by Customs and Border Protection in April were allowed to stay in the United States. Yet, as the administration dismantled the many Trump-era policies that discouraged illegal immigration and opened its arms to new arrivals, Harris had the gall to arrive in Guatemala and declare the border secure.

‘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. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border,’ she said.

Harris has repeatedly claimed that she is addressing the ‘root causes’ of the migrant crisis, or, in other words, the pull-factors that might drive people to migrate in the first place. The first problem with this approach is that we have been throwing billions of dollars to Central America for decades and haven’t seen a noticeable decline in crime and corruption, or an increase in economic security. The plan to nation-build our way out of a surge in illegal immigration calls to mind failed neoconservative projects to prevent terror by ‘spreading democracy’ throughout the Middle East. Second, even if such investment-driven solutions were effective, it would take years and years to see tangible returns. Meanwhile, migrants who falsely claim refugee status or political asylum (relatively narrowly defined categories)when their real motivation is a ‘better life’ will continue to flood the border. By the way, Harris has laughably identified one of the key causes of this surge as ‘climate change’, because obviously migrants are coming here for a change in the weather or because they don’t have enough wind turbines back home.

If Harris really had an interest in putting a stop to the migrant surge as soon as possible, she would visit the border and talk directly to these migrants, as well as local law enforcement and border patrol to ascertain what support they need to provide much-needed security for Americans living in border towns. But she has laughed at the concept of going to the border at every turn, showing how fundamentally unserious she is about solving the issue. When NBC’s Lester Holt asked Harris in an interview this week why she had not been to the border, she responded, ‘And I haven’t been to Europe! And I mean — I don’t understand the point that you’re making.’

The point is that anyone tasked with leading on an issue should probably make an attempt to view the problem firsthand and collect as much information as possible to craft solutions. Harris thinks that simple show of understanding and effort, however, amounts to a ‘grand gesture’. Oddly, she did not view border visits this way when she used them to protest and browbeat Trump over alleged ‘human rights abuse’.

Harris’s gaslighting on this issue is reinforced by the Biden White House’s claims that they have the crisis under control, merely because they have transferred the tens of thousands of individuals in custody from Department of Homeland Security ‘cages’ to Health and Human Services facilities. And let’s not forget that for months they refused to call it a ‘crisis’ at all. This administration’s prioritization of optics over good policy, exemplified by Harris’s absurd trip to Central America, will sadly only hurt the everyday Americans who are dealing with the economic and security consequences of increased illegal immigration.