VP Kamala Harris was NOT a "border czar"

This frequent Republican talking point about Kamala is false

Vera Bergenguren in Time (bold text is my emphasis):

“Kamala had one job,” Nikki Haley told the crowd at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week. “One job. And that was to fix the border. Now imagine her in charge of the entire country.”

In fact, Harris was never put in charge of the border or immigration policy. Nor was she involved in overseeing law-enforcement efforts or guiding the federal response to the crisis. Her mandate was much narrower: to focus on examining and improving the underlying conditions in the Northern Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—which has been racked by decades of poverty, war, chronic violence, and political instability. The strategy relied on allocating billions for economic programs and stimulating private-sector investment in the region in hopes that these programs would ultimately lead fewer migrants to make the dangerous journey north.

It was the first high-profile assignment in Harris' tenure as Vice President, and it was an especially thankless one. […]

Here’s Congressman Jim McGovern, Ranking Member on the House Rules Committee, confronting a Republican witness - asking him to provide any evidence for the false claim that President Biden appointed VP Harris as a “border czar”. The witness was unable to do so.

More from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, immigration lawyer and Policy Director at the American Immigration Council:

Another day and I see the GOP is continuing to lead with the proven falsehood that Harris was "named border czar."

You can go read Biden's remarks yourself; he is very clear that she was asked to lead a diplomatic strategy, not given a border policy role.

Finally, here’s Jeh Johnson, former US Secretary of Homeland Security and former General Counsel for the DOD under the Obama administration, pushing back on this false claim from Fox News’ Steve Doocy (via Lis Power):

First of all, Border Czar, the title, is a title Republicans gave her -- the WH, the president, did not call her that. Her role was diplomacy w/ Central America, she is not the border czar

[Image via StockSnap]