Harris Failed To Combat ‘Root Causes’ Of Illegal Immigration: Former Border Patrol Union Chief
Former Border Patrol union head Brandon Judd claims that Vice President Kamala Harris has not fulfilled her duties since President Joe Biden assigned her to tackle the root causes of illegal immigration in 2021.
“It’s very disappointing,” Judd, who recently retired as president of the Border Patrol Union, told Fox News. “We gave her the policies that she needed to implement. She refused to implement those.”
Judd reiterated his disappointment to Fox News Digital, saying, “We provided her with the policies she had to put into effect. She declined to put those into practice.”
Judd's remarks come amid increased scrutiny of Harris's record on immigration and border security following Biden's announcement that he would not run for president and would instead support Harris as his successor. Critics argue that Harris has failed on a crucial issue that will impact the 2024 election.
In response to criticism about the surge in migrants shortly after Biden took office, he appointed Harris to lead the administration's efforts to counter migration in March 2021.
The Associated Press reported on the day of the announcement that Harris was tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Administration officials told AP that Harris would develop a long-term strategy to address the root causes of migration from those countries and work to pressure them to strengthen their immigration laws and border security.
Biden stated during the announcement, “The vice president has agreed – among the multiple other things that I have her leading, and I appreciate it – agreed to lead our diplomatic effort to work with those nations to accept returnees and enhance migration enforcement at their borders.”
Harris acknowledged the difficulty of the task at the time, saying, “Needless to say, the work will not be easy. But it is important work.”
Fox News highlighted that:
Later in 2021, Harris negotiated a memorandum of understanding with Mexico, which saw the U.S. send $4 billion to help Central American countries address the root causes of illegal migration. Additionally, private companies committed an extra $5.2 billion to the cause.
However, an NBC News report published Thursday noted that Harris's efforts on this issue quickly dwindled. Harris visited Mexico in June 2021 to sign an agreement resulting in $4 billion in direct assistance and $5.2 billion in private-public investment but has not visited the border or countries to its south since January 2022.
Since 2021, the Root Causes strategy has made no new commitments, the report states.
Despite a decrease in crossings from the Northern Triangle, overall illegal crossings hit record highs in 2021, 2022, and 2023 as migrants from around the world arrived at the U.S. border.
Government data shows that more than 30,000 Chinese migrants were arrested for illegally crossing the southern border in 2023.
Judd, who led the union for most of the current administration, argued that the issues Harris identified were not the true causes of the increase in crossings.
“The major problem is the root causes she identified: political instability, climate, and crime,” Judd said. “That was the same under President Trump, yet we did not see an explosion in illegal immigration under the Trump administration.”
In 2018, the Trump administration faced a surge in attempted crossings that peaked in March 2019 at a 12-year high. The administration's response to the rise led to a steady decline in crossings for the rest of the year, a trend that continued during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Judd contended that the current administration's policies led to unprecedented increases due to the “magnet that [Harris] created, which is allowing people to be released into the United States.”
Harris has long supported more lenient enforcement for undocumented migrants. As California’s attorney general in 2015, she said, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”
“I’m a career prosecutor. I’ve personally prosecuted everything from low-level offenses to homicides. Unfortunately, I know what crime looks like. I know what a criminal looks like who’s committing a crime. An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal,” Harris said, according to a Newsweek report.
In a 2019 interview with NPR, while serving as a U.S. senator from California, Harris said she opposed “any policy that would turn America’s back on people who are fleeing harm.”
“I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for,” Harris said. “And so, I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge.”
During a debate, when asked if an immigrant should be deported if their only offense is being undocumented, Harris responded “no.”
“They should not be deported,” Harris said.
Judd argued that Harris still does not understand the true root causes of the migration crisis.
“Nothing has changed from President Trump to this administration,” Judd said of the situation in Central and South America. “Political instability was still there, the crime was still there, and the climate hasn’t changed from Trump to this administration, yet illegal immigration has exploded. … She has not addressed any of the root causes, and she refuses to recognize what the actual root causes are.”
“If she would have dealt with what she identified, we would have less illegal immigration, but she didn’t even deal with those causes that she identified,” Judd said.