Presented with rise in border crossings, Harris chose a long-term approach to the problem

WASHINGTON — President Joe Bidenwho watched tens of thousands of Central American migrants reach the U.S.-Mexico border just months after taking office, enlisted his deputy to help handle the influx — a decision that left the vice president in office Kamala Harris to one of its greatest political burdens.

In the battle with migrationHarris proceeded cautiously. She focused her time and prestige on encouraging private investment in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the so-called Northern Triangle; her goal was to create jobs to bolster economies and deter migrants from making the perilous journey to the United States.

It was a decidedly long-term, limited approach to a humanitarian crisis, and it has allowed Republicans to tie it to the broader struggle over the border. While migration from the Northern Triangle has declined, it has surged from other countries, creating an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border that Republicans have aggressively sought to exploit at Harris’s expense.

A review of Harris’s work on immigration reveals a record more nuanced than that of her critics or allies. It also offers insight into how Harris — who became the Democratic standard-bearer when Biden dropped out of last month’s presidential election — could address one of the country’s most pressing concerns.

Harris was never the “border czar,” or tasked with border security or stopping illegal crossings, as former President Donald Trump, Republicans and even the occasional media outlet have alleged. Instead, she was tasked in March 2021 with addressing the “root causes” of migration from the Northern Triangle and pushing its leaders — along with Mexico’s — to enforce immigration laws, administration officials said.

Harris’s supporters say she has shown leadership by using her standing to secure investments that could limit migration in the future.

“She felt — and I think she was right — that what she could do most was help lead the effort to attract investment, leveraging the trust that a relationship with the White House would give investors,” said Ricardo Zúniga, a former State Department official who specialized in the Northern Triangle and who traveled to the region with Harris.

Critics argue she could have done much more but chose a less risky approach, only making the problem worse.

“She said something like, ‘No, I’m just the cause,'” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reduced immigration. “Even if it worked, it’s a generational thing, not a one-term thing.”

He also said there was no evidence that Harris pressured Mexico and Northern Triangle countries to enforce immigration laws.

Harris has defended her work, and her campaign began airing a TV ad Friday saying that as president, Harris would “hire thousands of additional border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.” Democrats have also criticized Trump for helping to defeat a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that would have increased funding for border security, including hiring new staff for Customs and Border Protection.

Trump “has talked a lot about securing the border, but he’s not doing it,” the vice president said. said last month in Atlanta. She later added: “Donald Trump doesn’t care about border security. He only cares about himself.”

Immigration has long been an issue that motivated Trump and his base, and polls show it is one of the top issues on voters’ minds. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump said he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it. Trump failed to complete the project, and Mexico did not fund the portion of the barrier that was built. The former president also used explosive language to describe immigrants, launching his campaign by suggesting that Mexico was sending its “rapists” and criminals to the United States.

During his time in office, Trump tried to severely restrict asylum, which was challenged in court. This time around, Trump has promised to oversee a “mass deportation” of migrants who have committed crimes in the United States.

Migration rates have risen and fallen under both presidencies. Border Patrol apprehensions at the southern border fell in Trump’s first year in office but then shot up again in the next two years, to more than 850,000 in 2019. The numbers fell in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic but rose further during Biden’s presidency, peaking at more than 250,000 encounters in December 2023 before dropping below 84,000 again in June 2024, federal statistics show.

When Biden took office, he rolled back dozens of Trump’s immigration moves, even as arrests began to rise.

Haris received the migration order when the number of border crossings increased, attracting a lot of attention and leading to calls from both sides for action.

Chris Newman, an immigration rights advocate in Los Angeles, said Harris was in a difficult position.

“Her job was to develop a long-term policy framework rather than a short-term political performance project,” said Newman, the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Biden and Harris had taken office just two months earlier, and Harris was under pressure to expand her policy portfolio. When he was vice president, Biden had taken on a similar role on immigration. In 2021, however, Harris faced a particularly challenging situation, given the lack of governing partners in the region. El Salvador’s new president, Nayib Bukele, had a strained relationship with the administration over human rights concerns raised by his crackdown on crime in his country. The then-president of Honduras has since been convicted of drug trafficking.

Harris developed a headache almost immediately, confirming concerns from some on her team that it was a hopeless task.

Harris traveled to Mexico and Guatemala in June 2021, where she defended the fact she had not been to the US-Mexico border during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt saying she “had not been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t know what you mean.”

She also drew criticism on that trip for bluntly warning migrants, “Don’t come” to the US.

Harris decided to focus on attracting private investment to the region, using a network of business and nonprofit executives and the prestige of the White House to signal that the Biden administration supported the effort.

The work connected multinationals – such as Visa, Nestlé and Meta – with smaller nonprofits and Latin American companies, all of whom pledged to increase their investments or strengthen their work with vulnerable communities.

The Associated Press contacted allnearly two dozen companiesthe White House praised as participants in the outreach effort. Some, such as Agroamerica, a sustainable food company that pledged to invest more than $100 million in six new projects, reported that their work had begun and that they were on track to meet their investment goals. Others, including Columbia Sportswear Company, said they were likely to exceed their pledges.

However, most companies either declined to comment or did not respond at all when asked about their efforts.

The vice president’s office has said Harris’s efforts have yielded more than $5.2 billion in investment pledges. In an illustration of how long it takes for the pledges to translate into actual spending, the State Department reported that businesses nearly $1.3 billion in the region As of June 2024, most of this was in Guatemala and Honduras.

“We are on track to exceed our commitments,” said Peter Bragdon, a top executive at Columbia Sportswear Company, of its pledge to buy up to $200 million worth of products from the region. That pledge would create nearly 7,000 jobs over five years, the company said. The executive called Harris’s efforts a “work in progress” but “a smart move.”

Katie Tobin, who served as the National Security Council’s chief migration adviser for three years, said Harris’ focus helped spur more investment in reducing these numbers. She argued that Harris was able to leverage “her credibility” and the White House’s clout to persuade companies to invest in “a risky investment environment.”

“That was really Kamala Harris,” she added. “I’ve never seen anything like that in this room before and it was really impactful.”

Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a sharp critic of Harris, said the vice president and the White House were taking credit for investments that would have been made anyway.

The companies “are not doing it because someone asked them to,” said Scott, who co-founded a large medical device company. “They are doing it because it makes economic sense.”

Harris also sought to address the endemic corruption that has fueled migration from Central America. Before her 2021 trip to Guatemala, Harris met with a group of exiled Guatemalan prosecutors and judges in Washington.

Among them was Thelma Aldana, a former chief prosecutor who fled her country after what she described as politically motivated corruption allegations.

“I came away with the belief that she is really interested in seeing things change in Central America,” Aldana said.

According to Luis Von Ahn, an American technology entrepreneur from Guatemala, the vice president also deserves credit for helping stop former Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei from overturning the 2023 election of his successor, Bernardo Arévalo.

“Giammattei didn’t want to give up power, the Kamala Harris administration came and told him, ‘stop (messing around),’” said von Ahn, the founder of the language learning app Duolingo. “That’s a big help for Guatemala. When an extremely corrupt president doesn’t want to leave, that’s terrible and (his departure) makes us a better country.”

While the Harris campaign and the White House point to statistics showing that migration from the Northern Triangle countries has dropped significantly since the beginning of 2021, the cause of that decline remains debated.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Harris and the administration deserve credit for the reduction because their efforts “worked.”

However, independent analysts said they were skeptical that Harris’s approach was responsible for the decline. They said the drop was likely driven by regional factors, including the rise of El Salvador’s new president and his aggressive push to combat violent crime. His administration has reported a 70% drop in homicides by 2023.

Julia Gelatt, deputy director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, says it could take years for investments to change migration patterns, if ever.

“Even a good dose of economic development cannot reduce immigration in the way that countries hope,” Gelatt said.

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Riccardi reported from Denver. Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City contributed to this story.