Ex-Obama Chief Shoots Down Anti-Kamala Harris Attack In Fox News Hit: ‘Border Czar is a Title Republicans Gave Her’
Former President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson shot down the line that Democratic presumptive nominee Kamala Harris was ever a “border czar,” arguing instead that the title was one Republicans gave her.
As vice president, Harris was tasked with addressing the root causes of migration from Central America but did not take on the title of “border czar,” which is a role handled by the Secretary of Homeland Security. Despite this, Republicans have repeatedly referred to her in that way in a bid to shape the national conversation around immigration and attach blame to Harris.
At the Republican National Convention, multiple speakers, including Nikki Haley, called her “border czar.” Former President Donald Trump told CBS News that Harris was the “worst ever” border czar.
Johnson appeared on Fox & Friends on Tuesday and pushed back on the idea, as host Steve Doocy pointed out that with the launch of her presidential campaign, Harris’ “record on borders” was “going to come into glare.”
DOOCY: You’ve been on our program a couple of times recently to talk about the southern border. Now, that Kamala Harris is essentially the presumptive nominee on the Democratic side her record as borders czar is going to come into glare, into focus a lot. Famously, she had this quip after being asked about whether she was going to go to the southern border.
[Fox & Friends ran a clip of Harris admitting that she had not been to the southern U.S. border, nor had she been to Europe.]
DOOCY: Which is kind of a crazy answer.
JOHNSON: So first of all, borders czar, the title… It’s a title that Republicans gave her. The white House, the president, did not give her that title.
DOOCY: What do you call her then?
JOHNSON: She assumed the role that Vice President Biden had during the Obama administration, which is diplomacy with Central America. That was a role he had. He gave it to her. She is not the border czar. To the extent there’s anybody who’s a border czar, it’s the secretary of Homeland Security.
DOOCY: Okay. So she was tasked with trying to figure out the root causes for why everybody was coming up here. Under Joe Biden…
JOHNSON: Which needs to be discussed a lot more, by the way.
DOOCY: They need to figure it out so that it can be controlled. During the Biden administration, Biden-Harris [administration], 1.5 million more [people] entered the country illegally than did during Trump and Obama combined. That’s a big number.
JOHNSON: You have to look at the larger picture. Crossings during the Obama years were actually at a rate a lot lower than the Trump years. FY19, President Trump’s third year of office, we had almost a million, which is about twice as large as anything I ever saw. There is a large hemispheric shift northward because of drought, famine, corruption, poverty, violence. There are aspects of our immigration system that serve as magnets for that.
DOOCY: It’s easy to come in.
JOHNSON: The hard lesson I learned, Steve, from managing this problem is the push factors always overwhelm whatever defense you can put on the southern border. There are things we can do to enhance enforcement, to be lax on enforcement that have an immediate short term impact one way or the other. But so long as those overwhelming push factors exist, they’re going to keep coming. And so you do. People don’t like to hear this, but you do have to address the problem at the source and fix our immigration system here, which is broken.
Watch above on Fox & Friends.
