Border politics

Vice President Kamala Harris and her team rushed to scrub her record on the largest, most public job she was given in the Biden-Harris administration. As soon as President Joe Biden acknowledged the political reality that he couldn’t beat former President Donald Trump and anointed Harris his successor, the first thing that had to go were mentions of her work as the administration’s “border czar.” 

The title was, in fact, never an official one. Journalists used it as shorthand for the incredibly difficult task Harris was given of addressing the “root causes” of the massive surge in migration from South American countries to the U.S. southern border. Biden and Harris leapfrogged the handful of Trump-era policies the president reversed on Day One, including chipping away at the popular and effective “Remain in Mexico” plan that required migrants to try to seek asylum in countries they encountered before reaching the United States.