A beatdown at the border on Vice President Harris’ first overseas trip

Cookies with her likeness and a fawning media can’t cover up strong words from the Guatemalan President, a terrible interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, and an inability to concede that actually visiting the border in the middle of a border crisis might be a good idea.  Don’t worry though, she’s going to rebuild Central America for $4 billion to address the “root causes.”

Let’s just say it hasn’t been a very good week for Vice President Kamala Harris.  She embarked on her first foreign trip to Mexico and Guatemala to address the “root causes”of the massive increase in migration that has occurred since Biden took office.  The reception in Central America and back home in the United States was far from positive despite the media spin.  Even before Air Force Two took off, the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, had strong words for Biden and Harris.  “We are not on the same side of the coin. It is obvious,” Mr Giammattei told CBS.  “We are in agreement on the ‘what,’ which is something. We are in not agreement on the ‘how.’”  “The message [under the Biden administration] changed to, ‘We are going to reunite families and we are going to reunite children,’” he explained. “The very next day the coyotes here were organizing groups of children to take them to the United States.”

Vice President Harris arrived in Guatemala the following day with what the mainstream media is calling a “blunt” message, more on that in a moment.  “The goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home,” She said in a press conference with the Guatemalan President.  “At the same time, I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come,” she added. “I believe if you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Of course, this is in stark contrast with her positions before taking office and the administration’s actions since.  For example, at a 2019 primary debate hosted by Univision and moderated by Jorge Ramos, then-candidate Biden said immigrants should come.  “They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are,” Biden said of the influx of “asylum” seekers. “We’re a nation that says, “You want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.’”

Since then, the Administration has issued an executive order blocking deportations.  They’ve also reopened detention centers previously closed under President Trump, something even CNN described as a shift from turning people away, “Moves to increase capacity and shelter for migrants are indicative of one of the looming challenges for the Biden administration — more migrants at the border — but also signal a shift from the Trump administration’s posture of turning everyone away.”  Perhaps most importantly, they rescinded Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, which required asylum seekers to make their claim outside the United States, and only admit those with valid claims.  Bear in mind that only about 10% of asylum seekers have valid claims and only about 2% of families that are ordered to leave after their claim is rejected actually depart the country.  In other words, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now back to letting the 90% without valid claims into the country regardless, aware it’s a magnet for migrants because they know they will never have to leave, pretending to scratch their heads in confusion or babble about “root causes” about why the border is in crisis.

Meanwhile, the number of illegal immigrants streaming across the southern border has increased tenfold, that is 10 times as many people, in less than six months.  In fact, 6,000 people per day were coming across the border in March; to put this in perspective the Obama administration called the border a crisis when the level was 1,000.  The situation is so bad that Biden’s own Homeland Security Secretary, Aljandro Mayorkas said we’re “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”  He’s close:  We’re at the highest in 15 years, 180,000 in May alone and over 38,000 children who crossed the border alone were sent somewhere into the United States, the highest in history.

Incredibly, despite these dramatic, almost frightening numbers, remember these are all living, breathing people who have taken a thousand mile trek across difficult terrain essentially because the Biden Administration told them to, some even wearing his tee-shirt, Vice President Harris remained completely and inexplicably tone deaf on the issue, even laughing during an interview and handing out cookies with her likeness to reporters.  These shenanigans are after Biden put her in charge almost 80 days ago, but she has yet to actually visit the border.

For some reason, Vice President Harris seems surprised the topic keeps coming up at all.  “We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border,” Harris told NBC’s Lester Holt.  He replied, “You haven’t been to the border.”  In response, she laughed for whatever reason and said “And I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”  It is inconceivable that a woman as intelligent as Vice President Harris doesn’t understand why someone would want to visit the border in the middle of a border crisis.  Press Secretary Jen Psaki, as usual, was left to do some clean up after the interview.   “I think that at some point she may go to the border. We’ll see,” Ms. Psaki said at her daily press briefing. “If it is constructive and it moves the ball forward for her to visit the border, she certainly may do that.” 

Perhaps needless to say, Republicans were not so charitable.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted, “The Vice President thinks the border crisis is a hilarious joke.”  Representative Andre Garbarino from New York wrote, “I have been to the border and it’s nothing to laugh about. Thanks to Biden/Harris policies, officials are stretched thin and both border communities and migrants are suffering. This is not a joke, it’s a crisis on your watch.”

Nor was the interview with Lester Holt the only time Vice President Harris seemed flummoxed at the idea that she should actually visit the border.  When asked by a reporter in Guatemala, she dismissed such a trip as a “grand gesture,” whatever that means.  On Tuesday in Mexico, when asked why not simply stop on her way back from Mexico City, “I’ve been to the border before. I will go again.  But when I’m in Guatemala dealing with root causes, I think we should have a conversation about what’s going on in Guatemala.”  She was pressed again on the issue, and simply dodged it, claiming “the issue of root causes is not going to be solved in one trip that took two days.”

All of this desperately begs the question:  What is the big deal about actually going to the border?  Why refuse to do so for no apparent reason and then pretend an obviously necessary trip was some kind of bad joke?  The Biden Administration has attempted to dodge the question entirely by claiming Vice President Harris is only in charge of addressing the “root causes’” (there’s that phrase again) of immigration from the three Northern Triangle countries, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, but it is predominantly residents of those countries that are arriving at the border.  Vice President Harris herself said at the press conference in Mexico City, “I also believe that if you want to fix a problem, you have to go to where the problem exists. If you want to address the needs of a people, you must meet those people. You must spend time with those people.  Because the only way we can actually fix the problem is to understand the problem.”

Adding insult to injury as they say, Vice President Harris was greeted in Guatemala by pro-Trump protestors, complete with signs claiming “Trump won” and telling her to “Go home.”  The mainstream media is, of course, doing everything in their power to spin an obviously disastrous trip in a positive light, more propaganda than reporting.  For example, Politico praises Vice President Harris’ “blunt” message with no mention of any of their prior not-so-blunt messages.  “Her approach, on her first foreign trip as vice president, was clear: Be blunt.  That won plaudits from local activists and civil society leaders as a solid start, but also highlighted the gulf that remains between the U.S. and Guatemalan governments, particularly when it comes to cracking down on corruption. Harris’ ability to close that gulf will, ultimately, be the most important test of her fledgling diplomatic skills, not to mention her political agility as she positions herself for a possible future presidential run.”

There was mention of the sharp criticism from the Guatemalan President or the pro Trump protesters.  There was barely a mention of the scope of the crisis, insisting that the number of migrants was “steadily” increasing before Biden took office and claiming the majority are still being kicked out despite Biden’s executive order and the evidence of our own eyes.  Politico even glossed over her refusal to visit the border, quoting Harris as being “focused on addressing irregular migration in a ‘way that is significant and has real results.’”  Incredibly, the authors chose to focus more on corruption in Guatemala itself rather than the Biden Administration’s obvious failings.   In fact, corruption was mentioned 16 times.  The border itself, as in the whole driving force behind the trip, was mentioned 10 times, twice when quoting Harris herself.

The corruption angle was an obvious ploy to support the whole “root causes” canard, essentially an endless nation building exercise below our southern border.  In short, the Biden Administration plans to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants by spending a lot of money and politely insisting on changes to their systems of government.   As summarized by Politico itself, “Harris laid out a plan to deter migration to the U.S. by working to improve both physical and economic security and combat corruption. The Biden administration will create an anti-corruption task force that will conduct investigations and will enlist U.S. prosecutors and law enforcement officers to train their Central American counterparts to build corruption cases.”

Of course, there’s a woke component as well, “The vice president also announced the U.S. will make various investments, including an initiative to create opportunities for young, primarily indigenous women entrepreneurs.”  The cost of all this is estimated at $1 billion per year over four years, even though “few details have been shared about how the U.S. would roll out that $4 billion plan.”  Apparently, the Biden Administration has learned absolutely nothing from our failed nation building ventures in the Middle East, where spending trillions still wasn’t enough.

They can’t possibly believe a billion a year is going to do anything meaningful in our lifetimes given these countries have been in shambles for years now, but they’ll keep pushing it to avoid the obvious solution:  This is a self-inflicted wound, reinstate the Trump Remain in Mexico and get tough on enforcement.  It’s that simple.  Instead, the Vice President would rather serve cookies on Air Force Two, complete with her likeness emblazoned on them.  I’m serious, you need to see these for yourself.  Let them eat cake, anyone?

Of course, her handmaidens in the media would be glad to do so.  At the same time, there have been some reports Biden isn’t happy.  “There was certainly progress, but there are now concerns that some of that progress may have been overshadowed by her answers to some of these questions that her team knew that she would be facing,” CNN’s Jeremy Diamond said yesterday. “It’s left some of the administration officials perplexed, and the vice president’s team frustrated.”

Here’s a suggestion:  How about they get frustrated about the kids in cages and the crisis they themselves created?