Is Kamala Harris a ‘failed border queen’?

From the start, Donald Trump’s first television ad blasting rival Kamala Harris focused on what her campaign believes is her biggest weakness — immigration.

“This is America’s border king,” the narrator says, over images of the vice president dancing, “and he’s failed.”

A series of statistics followed, showing what the Trump campaign says is happening under Ms. Harris, who was given the role of dealing with the border crisis by President Joe Biden shortly after his inauguration.

The numbers in the video range from the illegal threshold of 10 million to 250,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths.

The voice concluded: “Kamala Harris: failed, weak, dangerous freedom.”

Harris’ campaign responded that the former president was running on his “false brand”.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump campaign has taken its first major turn at Ms Harris as a “failed border governor”, blaming her for the high numbers of undocumented immigrants on the southern US border.

Americans have been saying throughout this year’s election that immigration is the biggest problem facing their country, and it will be on the minds of many when they vote for America’s next president in November.

Since that first ad, Trump and his partner JD Vance have repeatedly labeled Ms. Harris as a “failed border king”, and tied her to endless images of people crossing the Rio Grande or pressing under the razor to the US.

His critics say he should have found a way to fix this issue in the last four years.

But “border king” is a contested term. Supporters and officials who worked for the vice president said that he was not given the job of police at the border.

“It was never that position,” said Ricardo Zuniga, former Under Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

“He knew from the beginning, as did the rest of the US government, that it was going to deal with immigration at its source.”

In early 2021, President Biden gave Ms. Harris an irresistible brief to address the “root causes” of Central American immigration.

At the time, people were fleeing a perfect storm of gang-related violence, economic destruction and natural disasters in the so-called Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Speaking to the migrants traveling through Mexico, it became clear that most came from Honduras where, they said, a brutal “dictatorship” ruled and wages were as low as five dollars a day.

Although the main purpose of Harris’ role was to reduce the number of people arriving at the American border, Mr. Biden never used the words “border king” when announcing his candidacy.

“He is the most qualified person to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle in stopping the flow of so many people to our southern border,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

However, many people see this assignment as inclusive. Many media organisations, including the BBC, have described Ms Harris as a “king” in news reports.

Some analysts in Central America and Mexico questioned her qualifications, as Ms. Harris had no prior experience in Latin American affairs.

Czar or not, the job was hard, thankless work.

Successfully addressing decades of underinvestment and the region’s deep economic and political conflicts will require large sums of money, as well as good coordination and cooperation between organizations. That is very short in Washington, especially when it comes to immigration.

“The idea that any American administration will change the history of 500 years in Central America in four years is ridiculous,” said Ricardo Zúniga.

As the former lead US attorney in the Northern Triangle, he insists that the Biden administration be involved in the problems of Central America.

He points to Ms Harris’ help in raising $5bn (£3.9bn) from the private sector to create jobs and businesses in the region. Several former members of his team recount how he personally called CEOs, persuading them to invest.

During her visit to Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021, I saw Ms. Harris trying to put on a soft face, following four years of Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric. He said he was happy that people were fleeing “famine, hurricanes and epidemics” and went on to establish an anti-corruption task force in Central America.

However, that trip is best remembered for his strong message to all those who want to migrate: “Don’t come. if you come to our border, you will be turned back.

Millions ignored his warning. Nearly two years later, in December 2023, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials had 300,000 encounters with undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Many who have ruled the border in recent years do not view Kamala Harris and her work in Central America well.

“Whatever he’s been doing diplomatically in other countries, I wouldn’t say it’s very successful based on what we’ve seen here on the actual border,” said Douglas Nicholls, the Republican mayor of Yuma, Arizona.

“We had record numbers of people, numbers that far exceeded anything we had seen before, including the population of our town that tripled in one year. Those were scary numbers.”

The vice president is the “legitimate” target in the matter, which he says is not “an excuse to establish support among the base.”

“It should have been fixed earlier than it was,” said Mayor Nicholls.

Others suggested the money Ms Harris helped raise had little effect on the big incentive to move people north – paid for in US dollars.

Ricardo Barrientos, director of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, said that US private sector investment is equal to Central American remittances: $37 bn last year alone.

“It’s too little compared to the magnitude of the challenge. Some would say, ‘too little, too late’,” he said.

But Katie Tobin, who worked on immigration in the White House, says Ms Harris’ work has been deliberately “misunderstood and misrepresented”.

Ms. Harris deserves credit for the “good news” in Central America, she says. He points to figures showing a 72% drop in migrants from Central America between March 2021, when Ms Harris takes office, and June 2024.

Ultimately, the perception of Ms. Harris’ record may divide the group.

In recent months, the number of undocumented immigrants has decreased.

This is partly due to an executive order issued by President Biden that allows illegal immigrants in the US to be deported without processing their asylum claims. There are also many legal pathways to the United States for prospective immigrants.

Ms. Harris’s defense primarily points to Trump’s resistance to getting a bipartisan deal on immigration reform through Congress.

In February, lawmakers reached the deal after much wrangling, in which Democrats ceded much ground to Republican positions. Republican leaders then blocked it at the urging of Trump, who reportedly did not want to give the Biden administration a win.

“It was Trump himself who, for political reasons, undermined an agreement that would help stabilize the border,” Mr Zúniga said. “So, the Trump campaign is their argument on this one.”

Mayor Nicholls in Yuma is unmoved by that defense, saying: “I think that’s just a passing memory.

He remembers contacting the Trump White House during the crisis. He was invited to speak directly with the president and the secretary of security in the country in a meeting where he was given additional resources.

Three months later, he says “we were out of that problem”.

“That is effective leadership on the border,” he adds.

Still, Ms. Tobin says the Harris campaign should be talking about it more.

“When there’s a vacuum and the vice president doesn’t talk about immigration, it creates an opportunity for Republicans to fill the airwaves with disinformation.”

Harris’ campaign responded to Trump’s first ad with some of its own.

The first focused on Trump’s opposition to the immigration deal, accusing him of trying to block him from fixing a “broken” immigration system.

The latter laid bare her work in front of the Biden administration, emphasizing that as California’s attorney general, Ms. Harris prosecuted cartels and drug-trafficking groups – and as president she will deal with fentanyl and human trafficking.

It remains to be seen whether this new status will be enough for him to shed the “failed border king” label, as Republicans will no doubt continue to reinforce that image until election day.