Introduction

As the second half of 2021 begins, the YTD border encounters have already exceeded those of previous years. Approximately 3 months ago, Joe Biden appointed Kamala Harris as the "border czar" to access and address the border crisis. However, within that time period, Harris has not properly visited the border, let alone visit the actual problem areas. Her vacillation not only drew criticism from conservatives, but also folks from her own party.

In June, Harris appeared to finally take the initiative. She visited Mexico and Guatemala to meet with their respective presidents. On top of that, she visited El Paso, Texas which has been the closest she has been to the border. However, these trips only ended up further emphasizing her unfitness for the vice president job as well as revealing some weaknesses we didn't know until now.

The Guatemala and Mexico Trip

On June 7, 2021, Harris first flew down to Guatemala. There, she was met with a bunch of Guatemalan protestors who had some not-so-nice things to say, including "Kamala Mind Your Own Business”, "Kamala Go Home” and "Kamala, Trump Won”. To give her some credit, she actually had the courage to tell migrants to not come to the border and that they would be turned away. Of course, saying things and doing things are completely different from each other.

Throughout the Central America trip, Harris would be bombarded with questions about the border crisis. While getting put on the spot can be unnerving, Harris should have expected this would happen considering that was the point of the trip: to address the border crisis and illegal immigration. However, her responses and answers to some of the questions ranged from unusually confrontational to out of left field.

Univision anchor Ilia Calderón asked Harris on when she would visit the border to which Harris would refuse to give a clear answer and get defensive.

NBC News' Lester Holt also asked Harris if she had plans to visit the border to which she answered "We're going to the border" before 'correcting' herself with "We've been to the border".

If you think this is something only conservatives get all roiled about, well just look up and watch how CNN's Abby Phillip called Harris's answer to Calderónas "cringeworthy". In addition, CNN also characterized her trip as "rocky" in an editorial. The author, Maeve Reston, called her response to Lester Holt "tone-deaf" and stated that even some White House officials were perplexed at her answers.

To go back on Harris's answer to Calderónas's question, her statement that the administration was focusing on the "root causes" of the border crisis missed the forest for the trees. In fact, it's pretty obvious to identify the root cause of the illegal immigration problem. TL;DR version - Cartels and gangs terrorize the domestic population; the people try to travel to the border, paying boatloads of money to human traffickers who also work for the cartels and gangs; the money gives cartels and gangs more power; and wash, rinse, repeat.

Harris's Non-Visit to the Border

On June 25, 2021, Harris finally "visited" the southern border as she landed in El Paso, Texas. She visited the CBP station before she flew off to California. However, there is one eensy teensy problem. If you check Google Maps, you'll see that the CBP station is in the opposite direction of the actual border.

In addition, her visit to El Paso was so brief that the mainstream media's coverage of her visit was also extremely short:

Harris's trip especially drew criticism from Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar. He stated that El Paso would not give her the full picture of the border crisis as opposed to visiting towns such as Roma or McAllen. Cuellar also criticized Harris for never responding to his invitation to his district which includes the border town of Laredo. Overall, he characterized her El Paso trip as politically safe and a "check in the box".

Honestly, it is not a total surprise why Harris opted to go to El Paso. If you check out this 2020 election map from the Washington Post, the districts from the Rio Grande region heavily shifted to the right. Incidentally, that is where the most of the border crisis is happening. On top of that, Republican candidate Javier Villalobos won the mayoral race in McAllen. Hidalgo County, which includes McAllen, used to be a "safe blue" county, but Villalobos managed to win despite the odds. In contrast, El Paso did not exhibit as large of a shift as the Rio Grande region hence why Harris visited there.

However, that didn't stop Harris from flubbing her answers when asked a bunch of questions from reporters:

The comedy of errors do not just end there. Meanwhile, during her visit, according to the Daily Mail, border patrol apprehended around 6,000 illegal migrants 6 miles away from El Paso in Sunland Park, New Mexico. In addition, two Harris staffers in charge of planning trips, Karly Satkowiak and Gabrielle DeFranceschi, resigned during her El Paso trip. That eventually spawned a rather scathing report from Politico regarding the toxic work environment within Harris's office.

Closing Thoughts: Internal Dysfunction Corroborates Harris's Incompetency

Harris's answers during her trips to Guatemala and Mexico were very perplexing to the point that even some of the White House staff went "... Huh??". Even news outlets like CNN who are partial to the Democrat Party have criticized her performance. Regarding her visit to El Paso, it was a deliberately politically safe trip to a border town that did not have it as bad as other places like McAllen, Laredo, and Roma.

The issue with Harris is that she can only kick the can down the road so much. Eventually, she will have to pay up the accrued political debt she owes and the exposé from Politico has revealed the severity of that debt.

Politico interview 22 current and former Harris and Biden staffers who described Harris's work environment as "a tense and at times dour office atmosphere". They specifically pointed fingers at Tina Flournoy, Harris's chief of staff, for creating "an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out" and lacking self-accountability. To quote one anonymous staffer:

“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” said another person with direct knowledge of how Harris’ office is run. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s---.”

Regarding the El Paso trip, while Harris has denied that it was in response to her conservative critics and Trump upstaging her with his own collaborative effort with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, some of her aides stated otherwise. They "said it was evident she was trying to just move past the coverage and, in doing so, may have helped affirm the right-wing misinformation campaign against her".

Overall, having read Politico's piece, it is not surprising why Harris is really bad at answering tough questions on the spot. The insular environment nurtured by Flournoy basically made Harris unprepared. The question is why has Harris allowed this coddling and toxic work environment to perpetuate? This is a very alarming development on Harris's merely 6-month long career as vice president and she still has 3.5 years to go. How will she react if the Republicans take back both chambers of Congress in 2022? How will she react if she runs for the White House in 2024, but she's polling dreadfully?