The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Biden taps VP Harris to lead response to border crisis
WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border.
Biden made the announcement as he and Harris met at the White House on Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas and other immigration advisers to discuss the increase in migrants, including many unaccompanied minors, arriving at the border in recent weeks.
In delegating the matter to Harris, Biden is seeking to replicate a dynamic that played out when he served as President Barack Obama’s vice president. Obama turned to Biden early in his first term to lead the White House effort to draw down U.S. troops in the intractable war in Iraq.
“When she speaks, she speaks for me,” Biden said, noting her past work as California’s attorney general makes her specially equipped to lead the administration’s response.
Biden is hoping to show Americans he’s taking the border situation seriously after facing stiff criticism from Republicans as the flow of migrants has increased since he took office in January. The growing humanitarian and political challenge at the U.S.-Mexico border threatens to overshadow the administration’s ambitious legislative agenda.
But the high-profile assignment for Harris, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and is expected to run for the White House again in the future, could be politically fraught.
To that end, Biden teased in his comments that he was saddling her with a “tough job.”
“Needless to say, the work will not be easy,” Harris said about her new assignment. “But it is important work.”
Harris is tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders, administration officials said. More broadly, though, she’s tasked with implementing a longterm strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.
She will work closely with
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the yet-to-be confirmed U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Powers, and Ricardo Zúñiga, special envoy to the Northern Triangle countries.
Biden made the announcement as a delegation of White House officials and members of Congress was traveling to the southern border on Wednesday to tour a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, being used to house migrant children.
More than 750 teenagers are being held at Carrizo Springs. Like other facilities operated by the Health and Human Services Department, it includes a small group of children who have tested positive for COVID-19, potentially having contracted the virus in Border Patrol custody. They are placed in isolation.
The Biden administration has in recent weeks moved to open more than 10,000 new beds across the Southwest in convention centers and former oilfield camps. It notified Congress on Wednesday that it will open a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person site at the San Diego convention center. HHS is also opening a second site in Carrizo Springs and exploring housing teenagers at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.