Gastonia, NC
I have to start with the title, because the question uses it and it belongs to a different person.
The Coordinator for the Southwest Border was Roberta Jacobson. She was appointed to the National Security Council in January of 2021 with that exact job description and she left at the end of April that year. That was the border coordinator. Not Harris.
What Harris was given, on the twenty-fourth of March 2021, was a diplomatic assignment: lead engagement with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador on the causes of migration from those countries. Root causes was the phrase, used by the President when he announced it and by her office continuously afterward. The White House pushed back on “border czar” at the time and kept pushing back.
I read copy for a living and I am not going to build an argument on a job somebody else held, because the first person who checks will throw the whole thing out and be right to.
Now, the label did not come only from Republicans, which is the part that gives it legs. Several mainstream outlets used “border czar” in the spring of 2021 — one of them has since attached a note to its original piece. So there is a genuine press-provenance story here and it is not the one either side is telling.
Here is what survives once the title is corrected, and I think it is enough.
She accepted a named public role on migration, in the first months of a term where migration became the administration’s central domestic vulnerability. She took the trip. She gave the speech. She stood next to the President when the assignment was announced and she was used, deliberately, as the face of a serious response.
Faces stay on the product. That is a real principle and it does not require her to have commanded a single Border Patrol agent. When you accept the credential you accept the scoring.
So the record belongs in the center of the race. But it has to be the actual record, described accurately, or we will spend the fall arguing about a job title instead of about migration.
Owatonna, MN
Minnesota is not going to score somebody on a job she did not hold, so let me set out what the assignment actually was before deciding where it belongs.
On the twenty-fourth of March 2021 the President asked her to lead diplomatic engagement with Mexico and the three Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador — on the drivers of migration from those countries. That was the brief. Not enforcement, not the ports, not detention, not asylum processing. Diplomacy with four governments about why people were leaving three of them.
What she did with it: a Root Causes Strategy published that July, a private-sector initiative she has said produced more than five billion dollars in commitments to the region, a trip to Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021 where she told a Guatemalan audience not to come — which drew the loudest criticism she received on the subject, and it came from her own left. One visit to the border itself, in El Paso, later that month.
Now the part that complicates the scoring, and I would rather raise it than have somebody else.
Measured against the countries she was actually assigned, the numbers went the right direction. Migration from the Northern Triangle peaked in fiscal 2021 and declined afterward. What produced the historic totals in 2022 and 2023 was a different population entirely — Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians — arriving from countries that were never in her portfolio and over which a root-causes strategy with Guatemala has no purchase at all.
So the honest sentence is that her assigned brief performed reasonably and the border deteriorated anyway, for reasons outside it.
That does not remove the file from the center of the race, and I want to be clear why. Presidential campaigns are not performance reviews of a vice president’s portfolio. They are judgments about a ticket’s posture, and this ticket’s posture on enforcement is a legitimate central issue. She was its second name for four years.
What I would drop is the specific charge that she failed at a border job. She did not have a border job. What she had was a diplomatic brief that mostly worked on a problem that had moved somewhere else, in an administration whose enforcement posture is the actual thing at issue.
Score the posture. Leave the org chart alone.
Prescott Valley, AZ
If you take the ride along the fence you do not get to say you were only in the truck. That is the instinct and it is sound. The trouble is that most people arguing it have the wrong truck.
I taught for a long time and I would put this one on the board as an exercise in checking a premise before building on it.
The premise everybody has been using: Harris was made the border czar in 2021 and the border got worse, therefore she failed.
Check it. In March 2021 she was asked to lead diplomacy with Mexico and three Central American countries on why people were leaving. The border coordinator job — that actual title, in that actual White House — belonged to Roberta Jacobson, who held it for four months and departed. The White House said repeatedly at the time that Harris was not running border operations.
So the premise fails at step one, and a student who built four paragraphs on it would deserve the mark he got.
Here is the exercise I would actually set. Given that she held a diplomatic brief rather than an enforcement one, is her record relevant to a presidential campaign?
Yes, and the reasoning does not require the wrong title. A vice president is on the ticket. The ticket’s four-year record on the issue is the thing voters are judging. She was the second name on it, she accepted a visible role on the subject, and she went out and defended the approach in public. That is enough to put the whole administration’s migration posture in the center of the race with her name attached to it.
What it does not license is claiming she ran a department she never ran.
The distinction matters beyond this campaign, which is why I would teach it. Political argument constantly reassigns responsibility to whoever is currently inconvenient, and the correction always arrives too late to matter. A claim that can be checked in ninety seconds should be checked before it is repeated, particularly by people who spend a lot of time complaining that others do not check.
Center of the race: yes. Border czar: no. Both of those can be said in the same sentence and the sentence is stronger for it.
Dayton, OH
A plant can put a coordinator on a failing line and later say she did not own maintenance. Before we run that argument we should establish which line she was on, and it was not the one everybody assumes.
The assignment, dated March 2021, was diplomatic engagement with Mexico and three Central American countries on the drivers of migration. The border coordinator role belonged to a different official on the National Security Council, who left after four months and was not replaced with that title.
Now the numbers, which are where the process argument actually lives.
Southwest border encounters ran roughly 1.7 million in fiscal 2021, 2.4 million in 2022, and 2.5 million in 2023. Those are the figures everybody cites and they are enormous.
Break them out by origin and the picture changes. Migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — her assigned countries — peaked in 2021 and fell afterward. The growth in 2022 and 2023 came from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. Those are countries with which the United States has minimal or hostile relations, over which a Northern Triangle root-causes strategy has no leverage whatsoever, and which were never in her portfolio.
In process terms, her station ran to spec and the defect entered from a supplier nobody had qualified.
And there is a current figure that belongs on the chart even though it complicates the argument. Border Patrol apprehensions in July were around fifty-six thousand, the lowest monthly total since September 2020, following the asylum proclamation in June. Whatever the four-year record shows, the line as it runs today is producing better numbers than at any point in this administration.
So what do I actually conclude?
That the specific charge — she was given the border and the border failed — does not survive the breakdown. And that the general charge survives easily, because it never depended on her portfolio. The administration’s enforcement posture over four years is the issue. She was on the ticket for all of it, she defended it publicly, and she is now asking to run it.
Score the posture, with the July number on the chart and the origin breakdown on the chart. That is a harder argument to make and a much harder one to answer.
Wheeling, WV
You do not get the credit lane and then the footnote lane. That has been my line on this and I am keeping it, with a correction to what lane she was actually in.
She was not made the border czar. That title belonged to somebody at the National Security Council who lasted four months. What Harris got was a diplomatic assignment on Central America — go talk to four governments about why people are leaving. She took it, she made the trip, she gave the speech, and she stood there for the photograph when it was announced.
Now here is why I still put the file in the center, and it has nothing to do with org charts.
In thirty years of grievance work I never once won an argument by proving a foreman was technically outside his classification. What decided cases was what the man had held himself out as doing. If he ran the crew, he ran the crew, whatever the contract said his title was.
She held herself out as the administration’s person on migration. Not on ports of entry, not on detention — on the reason people were coming. That was the administration’s central answer to the central criticism of its first two years, and she was the face of it by her own agreement.
So the file follows her. Not because she signed release memos. Because she accepted the assignment when it was a credential and the credential is now a liability, and you do not get to hand a credential back.
The one thing I would concede, and it is real, is that the thing that broke was not her piece. Migration from the countries she was working on went down. What went up was people coming from Venezuela and Cuba and Haiti, and nothing in a Guatemala root-causes strategy touches that. She was doing a job on a problem that moved.
That is a fair defense and she should make it. It is also not a defense against the ticket’s posture over four years, which is what the race is actually about, and which she has spent four years defending on television.
Center. With the right job title on it.
Tyler, TX
East Texas will let you explain the org chart after you explain the numbers, and I want to do both in the right order because our side has been doing neither.
The org chart first, since it takes one sentence. She was not the border coordinator. That was a National Security Council official appointed in January 2021 who left in April. Harris was given diplomatic engagement with Mexico and three Central American countries on root causes. Anybody in this Forum who says otherwise this fall is going to get corrected on camera and deserve it.
Now the numbers, and this is the underwriting.
Total encounters over the term were catastrophic by any historical standard. That is the loss. The question is attribution, and attribution is what an adjuster does for a living.
Her assigned exposure was three countries. Claims from those three countries peaked in the first year and declined. The loss came from a different book entirely — Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti — which nobody had underwritten and which no root-causes program in Guatemala reaches.
So on a strict attribution basis, her portfolio is not where the loss originated. I would say that out loud even though it does not help my side, because an adjuster who assigns a loss to the wrong policy gets the reserve wrong and eventually gets found out.
Here is what I still charge to her account.
A vice president is not an independent policy. She is the second signature on the ticket. For four years this administration’s posture on enforcement was the single largest domestic argument in the country, she defended that posture in public repeatedly, and she is now asking to be the one who sets it. That is the exposure and it does not require her to have held any particular job.
And there is a current figure I would insist on including because leaving it out is the sort of thing that discredits a whole argument. July apprehensions were the lowest monthly total in nearly four years, following the June proclamation. If our position is that the numbers are the case, we do not get to stop reading the numbers in 2023.
Center of the race: yes, on posture. Not on a title she never held, and not on a trend that has been going the other way for two months.
Long Island, NY
I draft responsibility allocations, so let me describe the one that was actually executed and then the one that was advertised, because the gap between them is the whole question.
The allocation, March 2021: lead diplomatic engagement with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador regarding the causes of migration from those countries. That is what the President announced and it is what her office described consistently for three years. The separate position of Coordinator for the Southwest Border existed on the National Security Council and was held by Roberta Jacobson until late April 2021.
So as a matter of allocation, she never held border responsibility. Her brief was foreign-policy engagement with four governments.
Now the advertising, and this is where the honest complication sits. The “border czar” label did not originate with her opponents. Several mainstream outlets used it in the spring of 2021, at least one of which has since appended a correction to its original reporting. The White House pushed back on the label repeatedly and did not push back hard enough or early enough to displace it.
That is a shared failure and it should be described as one. The administration accepted the visibility benefit of putting its vice president at the center of a migration announcement and then spent three years objecting to a shorthand that visibility had invited.
So where does the record belong?
Not as a claim that she failed at a job she held. That allocation does not exist and asserting it is the kind of error that discredits everything filed next to it.
It belongs as a claim about the ticket. A presidential campaign is not a performance review of a portfolio; it is a judgment about the posture of an administration and about the person asking to continue or change it. She was the second name on that administration for four years, she defended its enforcement posture publicly, and she chose to be visible on the subject when visibility was an asset.
Advertised responsibility follows the person who did the advertising. That principle is sound and it is enough. It does not need the wrong title to work, and it is considerably harder to rebut without one.
Cheyenne, WY
I keep books, so I want the accounts right before anybody posts a loss to them.
Account one: Coordinator for the Southwest Border. That was a National Security Council position, filled in January 2021 by Roberta Jacobson, vacated in April. Not her account.
Account two: diplomatic engagement with Mexico and three Central American countries on the causes of migration. Assigned to her in March 2021. Hers.
Account three: the administration’s enforcement posture over four years. That is a ticket account, and both names on the ticket are on it.
Now post the numbers to the right accounts.
Total encounters over the term were the largest on record. That posts to account three. Migration from the three countries in account two peaked in the first year and came down; the growth came from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti, which sit in nobody’s root-causes strategy. And July apprehensions were the lowest in nearly four years, which also posts to account three and posts in the administration’s favor.
So the entry our side has been making — she was given the border and lost it — posts a loss to an account she does not hold. That is bad bookkeeping and it will be caught.
The entry that is correct is on account three, and account three is plenty. She spent four years as the second name on a posture the country has spent four years arguing about, she defended it in public, and she is asking to run it. That belongs in the center of a presidential race without any adjustment at all.
Post it to the ticket. Leave account one out of it, because it was never hers, and an argument built on somebody else’s ledger does not survive an audit.
Sheffield, Jamaica
The Americans have spent three years arguing about a migration policy aimed at three countries, and the migration that broke their border came overwhelmingly from somewhere else — including from mine.
Let me put the geography down, because the American debate has almost none in it.
The assignment given to Vice President Harris in March 2021 concerned Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, plus diplomacy with Mexico. Migration from those three countries peaked in that first year and declined afterward. What produced the historic totals of 2022 and 2023 was a different population entirely: Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians. In one two-year stretch more Cubans arrived at the American southern border than in the Mariel boatlift and the balsero crisis combined. Haitian departures accelerated after the assassination of a president in July 2021 and the collapse of state authority in Port-au-Prince that followed.
None of that is within a Central American root-causes brief. Nothing a diplomat says in Guatemala City affects a Cuban economy in its worst contraction since the Soviet withdrawal, or a Haitian capital where gangs hold the port.
I say this as somebody whose country has a direct stake. Jamaica has committed personnel to the multinational security mission in Haiti, and we did so understanding that Haitian stability is a Caribbean problem before it is an American one. A hemisphere that leaves a failed state to the gangs will find its people arriving somewhere, and the somewhere is not usually Kingston.
Now the part that ought to interest this Forum, since it has spent an hour on whether a portfolio was operational.
The root-causes doctrine itself has a hemispheric record and it is not encouraging. The Alliance for Progress. Plan Colombia. The Mérida Initiative. The Central America Regional Security Initiative. Decades of American money aimed at the conditions that produce migration, across several administrations of both parties.
Here is the arithmetic that defeats all of it. Remittances now account for roughly a quarter of the entire economy of Honduras and El Salvador, and close to a fifth of Guatemala’s. The migration is not a symptom of those economies. It is a substantial fraction of them. No development programme funded at a few billion dollars over several years competes with a wage differential that pays a household ten times what it can earn at home, and every finance ministry in the region knows it.
So when Americans debate whether this vice president succeeded or failed at root causes, they are debating a job that no occupant has ever performed successfully, on a timescale of one presidential term, against an economic force that took forty years to build.
Score her on the ticket’s posture if you like. That is a fair fight. But the specific charge — that a root-causes brief failed — describes a policy that was never going to work and that Washington has been funding since 1961.
