(NewsNation) — Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens says Vice President Kamala Harris has not spoken with him since he was appointed in July 2023.
President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead his administration’s border efforts in March 2021. She made trips to some South American countries in the following months to plead with people not to make the dangerous trip to the United States, but she has not been visible in the years since as the problem ballooned.
Retired Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz told CBS in March he also never spoke with Harris during his tenure from August 2021 through June 2023.
What Harris has said about the border
Biden, back in 2021, said one of Harris’ roles was to stem the arrival of “irregular migrants.”
Harris, tasked with overseeing diplomatic issues regarding migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, was also asked to look into the root causes of why people leave these countries.
At a joint news conference with then-Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in June 2021, Harris said her goal was to help citizens of the country “find hope at home.”
“At the same time, I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come,” Harris said at the time — remarks that were criticized by some of her fellow Democrats.
This March, Harris announced private companies, aiming to deter illegal entry to the United States, are giving another $1 billion to Central American communities. That makes $5.2 billion total in pledges to assist economies in those countries since May 2021.
Still, the vice president acknowledged at the time that “the problems, of course, did not occur overnight, and the solutions will not be achieved overnight.”
Border under Biden-Harris
Under the Biden-Harris administration, migrant crossings from Mexico hit record highs at the end of 2023, with close to 250,000 crossing in December. Before that, the previous monthly high was 224,000 in May 2022.
On June 4, Biden signed an executive order halting asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of daily encounters between ports of entry reaches 2,500.
In June, according to the Associated Press, unlawful crossings from Mexico plunged 29%, marking the lowest month during Biden’s presidency. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, arrests totaled 83,536 in June, down from 117,901 the month before.
However, these numbers don’t match what border officials are reporting to NewsNation.
Since the executive action went into effect, border officials saw an average of 3,978 migrants per day. When Donald Trump left office, they were seeing an average of 2,329 migrant crossings each day over the same number of days, according to sources at the border.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
