Harris Spins a New Border Tale

Blaming the surge on Republicans evades years of failed policies

WSJ editorial. 

"The U.S.-Mexico border on Friday was the latest stop on Kamala Harris’s reinvention tour, and defending her record there will take more than a smile and shifting blame. She criticized Donald Trump and Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan Senate deal, as we did at the time. But as usual she blew past the steps that she and President Biden failed to take for more than three years as illegal migrant border crossings surged to record levels.

The Vice President chose Douglas, Ariz., for her border speech, hoping to convince swing-state voters that she’s serious about reducing the flow of migrants. The visit represents a shift to Plan B after the failure of her first strategy, which was to dodge the issue. Her campaign spent the first weeks after she gained the nomination telling the press that President Biden had never named her “border czar.”

But residents in border towns like Douglas aren’t likely to forget how security has unraveled on her Administration’s watch. More than 10 million migrants have been apprehended nationwide during the Biden Presidency, with a peak of 3.2 million last fiscal year. That compares with about three million in total under President Trump. The nearby chart tells the comparative story.

Democrats blame the surge on problems the White House had little power to fix, like the worldwide spread of Covid and disarray in countries such as Venezuela and Haiti. But Biden-Harris policies kept the border valve open while those forces built pressure.

The Administration signaled its openness to migrants in its first week when President Biden said he’d cancel Title 42, a policy Mr. Trump used to expel border crossers before they could claim asylum. The next month Mr. Biden moved to end Remain in Mexico, another Trump practice that kept migrants south of the border while they awaited legal entry.

The pace of migration rose again last year when Title 42 was finally ended after years of litigation, and the Administration had failed for two years to enact another deterrent. There was plenty of tough talk; Ms. Harris told Guatemalans “do not come” in 2021, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said “the border is closed.” Yet Mr. Mayorkas backed away from several policy restrictions, such as requiring all migrants to seek asylum in countries they cross en route to the U.S.

Ms. Harris now says all this is moot because Mr. Trump and Congressional Republicans shot down a bill that would have boosted border security. The plan, which collapsed in February, included a higher standard for asylum claims, and would have halted claims once crossings surpassed a weekly average of 5,000 a day. 

The bill would have helped at the margin, assuming the Administration had enforced it—and doubts about the latter were part of the political rub. Since the spring, the Administration has required migrants to claim asylum only at ports of entry, and border crossings have fallen sharply. The President had this authority all along but was unwilling to use it for fear of offending his party’s left wing.

This record of failure has been especially frustrating for anyone who favors generous legal immigration, as we do. The surge of migrants and its spread of fiscal, housing and law enforcement woes has soured public support. See the nearby story on the burden faced by Whitewater, Wis., population 15,000.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales this week that, as of July 21, “there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket,” detained and non-detained. This plays into the hands of border restrictionists.

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Ms. Harris says it’s possible to have both border security and a humane immigration system. That’s true, but that requires an Administration willing to enforce the rules. President Biden hasn’t.

Ms. Harris says she will, and we’d like to believe it. But even after the last three years, she refuses to call the Biden policies a failure. If she won’t admit that now to win over swing voters, why would she risk the left’s wrath once she’s elected? It takes a great leap of political faith to believe she won’t revert to Biden form."