Vice President Kamala Harris returned from Mexico on Wednesday facing criticism from all sides and putting a spotlight on the challenges she faces with a notoriously vexing issue that has plagued Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.
Though Harris declared the trip a “success,” hanging over the two-day swing were comments that left Democrats puzzled, drawing the ire of liberals and political opponents.
“She didn’t pitch a shutout,” one Democratic strategist said of the visit, Harris’s first foreign trip as vice president.
And if an issue is a political problem for a vice president, it’s likely an even bigger one for the president.
Speaking with NBC News’s Lester Holt, Harris was probed on why she hasn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border, a refrain since President Joe Biden tasked her with addressing the surge in migration from Central America.
Another strategist told the Washington Examiner that now would be the time to do this.
“Honestly, my view is she needs to go to the f***ing border and just say, ‘Yeah, I’ve been to the border,’” he said.
But while Harris’s response was frustrating, she was dealt a tricky hand, both Democrats said.
“Part of the failure is in how [the White House] framed her role,” the first person said. The second called the issue a “minefield.”
“This isn’t ribbon-cutting,” he added.
The White House needs to “figure out how to give her some support and some backup going forward,” the first strategist said, likening her perch to an “island.”
“I don’t think the president wants her to be out here by herself opining on immigration,” he said. “I also don’t think the president necessarily wants her to be his sole, primary messenger on the issue. And I think what has kind of become the case is that ‘Oh, this is her beat. She’s on the immigration beat.’”
He added: “I think they just kind of flubbed the rollout. It’s not criminal. It’s government.”
Harris has taken on the diplomatic assignment of keeping people from migrating to the southern border, a longer-term process which she has sought to distance from the immediate crisis along the southern border, where government data shows illegal crossings reaching a 20-year high.
“It’s hard to maintain that distinction in political terms,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “It is not surprising that if you are leading efforts to attack root causes, people are going to say that root causes are producing these migration flows, and we have a real problem with the border.”
Shifter, a policy expert for the region, said Harris succeeded in keeping expectations in check while marking some difference from the Trump administration’s approach, “which ignored serious problems of corruption, smuggling, lack of economic opportunity, and violence that propel Central Americans from those countries.”
“They’re small steps that can be built on,” he continued. “The real problem, which was glaringly evident, is that the partners in the region are not very committed to the same goals as the Biden administration.”
While the White House has been criticized for inconsistencies, with regional leaders charging that the administration has encouraged the uptick in numbers, during her visit in Guatemala City, Harris was pointed in her attempt to dissuade people from leaving.
“Do not come. Do not come,” Harris said during a press conference. “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.”
Harris drew criticism from immigration advocates at home and from prominent liberal lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, who called Harris’s plea “disappointing to see.”
Harris’s delivery “was not as nuanced as it might have been,” said Shifter, but there’s a sense “that this is an area where the Biden administration is vulnerable to attacks.”
Though Harris has been asked to deal with the push factors driving migrants to leave, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose district borders Mexico, told the Washington Examiner that the U.S. must also address the “pull factors.”
“As a border representative and someone who has spent my entire life living at the Southern border, I understand the complexity of immigration challenges and how these challenges affect my community every single day,” Cuellar said in a statement. “In fact, immigration is personal — I am one of 8 children born to migrant farm workers who entered our country legally.”
He added: “I understand the reasons why people look to flee crime, corruption, and the effects of climate change to seek a better, safer life. But the reality is two-fold: the journey is extremely dangerous and our border communities do not have the proper resources to handle the influx.”
According to the latest Customs and Border Protection data, 180,034 people were apprehended crossing into the U.S. illegally in May, the highest number in two decades.
The White House’s political opponents have taken note.
Pointing to these numbers, Stephen Miller, a top aide and immigration policy adviser to former President Donald Trump, called the trip “uniquely disastrous” in an interview with Washington Secrets.
“You have a situation where literally every single month, as you are claiming to be trying [to close the border], this situation is destabilizing more and more and more,” Miller said.
Of the border, the Republican National Committee quipped that she had “skipped right over it.”
Allies said that despite the backlash, Harris was well suited to the role.
“She’s somebody who, throughout her career, has taken on tough challenges and is able to step up even when facing detractors on different sides of the political aisle,” one Democratic strategist said. “The question I would ask is, ‘OK, go to the border to see what? To see what that she hasn’t already seen?”
He added: “She has one task, and that is to serve her boss, the president.”
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Still, this person said, “It is quite a gift that the president gave her.”
