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Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has launched a new general election ad that falsely labels Vice President Kamala Harris the “border czar” and falsely suggests that 10 million people illegally crossed the southern border on her watch and are still “here.”
As we’ve written before, Harris was specifically tasked with leading efforts to address the root causes of migration from three countries in Central America. She was not put in charge of U.S. border security, as the “border czar” title implies. That is the responsibility of the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Also, during the Biden-Harris administration, there have been nearly 7 million apprehensions of those trying to cross the southern border illegally through June, according to the most recent figures available from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Another 1.1 million people arrived at legal ports of entry without authorization to enter the U.S. There may have been nearly 2 million who illegally crossed and were not caught.
But data on the initial action taken at the border, available only through March, shows that in about 3 million cases, the encountered individuals were either quickly removed or denied entry.
The Trump campaign released the 30-second ad, titled “I Don’t Understand,” on July 30 and said it “will run across six battleground states.”
Not the ‘Border Czar’
The ad begins with a video of Harris dancing while a narrator says, “This is America’s border czar and she’s failed us.” But the claim that Harris is the “border czar” is false.
Not long after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Harris to head up the “Root Causes Strategy,” an effort to “improve security, governance, human rights, and economic conditions” in Central American countries. The strategy included a number of actions designed to “address the root causes of migration” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, specifically. The synopsis released by the White House said that the strategy would focus on tackling economic insecurity and inequality, confronting corruption, and reducing violence, among other things.
Biden did not put Harris in charge of issues at the border. (Another Trump ad claims that “Biden made Kamala Harris border czar to fix immigration.”)
Harris addressed her role in a June 2021 NBC News interview with Lester Holt in Guatemala. A clip from that interview is featured in the campaign ad embedded above.
“Well, Lester, here’s the thing,” Harris began, as she explained why she had said that migrants should not come to the U.S. illegally. “I’ve been working on this issue for a very long time, and the kind of violence and danger that is associated with that trek, especially when we are talking about from Guatemala through Mexico to the United States. It’s extremely dangerous, and the reason that I am in Guatemala is to address the reasons people leave home, flee. … They want to stay. They don’t want to leave, but they need opportunity, they need assistance, they need support and we have the ability to give them that.”
Later in the interview, when Holt pressed her about not having gone to the U.S.-Mexico border by that point in her vice presidency, Harris said that she believed the border and the underlying reasons for illegal immigration are both important.
“I care about what’s happening at the border,” she said. “I’m in Guatemala, because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what’s happening at the border, we’d better care about the root causes and address them. And so that’s what I’m doing.”
About two weeks after that interview, Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did travel to part of the border in El Paso, Texas. In remarks made at a press conference during the trip, Mayorkas talked about the administration’s plan to address a surge in migration and who would take on what role.
“The vice president is leading our nation’s effort to tackle the root causes of migration — why people leave their home in the first place,” Mayorkas said. “I and my colleagues in the Cabinet have been directed to execute the rest of the plan: to build safe and legal pathways for people who qualify for humanitarian relief under the laws our Congress has passed; to rebuild our country’s asylum system that was dismantled under the prior administration; in an orderly and just way, to remove those whose claims for relief do not qualify.”
He went on to say that he and DHS had the “responsibility to secure the border.”
Border Crossings
The ad also gives the false impression that, during the Biden-Harris administration, 10 million people entered the U.S. illegally and remain in the country.
A graphic on screen reads, “over 10 million illegal border crossings.” Meanwhile, the ad’s narrator says, “under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.”
But all the people who were encountered at the border are not still here; millions were removed or denied entry, almost immediately.
From February 2021 to June 2024, there were nearly 7 million apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally, according to CBP data. There were another 1.1 million instances of individuals who showed up at a legal port of entry but were “inadmissible,” meaning they did not have legal permission to enter the country. Also, based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78%, according to DHS, there were an estimated nearly 2 million “gotaways” who illegally entered the country and avoided being detected by authorities.
Adding those all together gets to 10 million border crossings, although each one does not necessarily represent a different person because some people may have been encountered more than once due to repeated attempts to gain entry into the country.
However, for the people encountered at the border, many of them did not get to stay.
We have comprehensive data on what happened after initial border evaluations only through March. For the nearly three-year period of February 2021 through March 2024, there were about 3 million removals or repatriations by CBP, according to monthly figures from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.
Another 3.3 million were released into the country with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole. There were also 414,900 transfers to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for unaccompanied children who cross the border without adult family members or legal guardians, and about 910,000 transfers to ICE. The transfers to ICE include those who are then booked into ICE custody, enrolled in “alternatives to detention” (which include technological monitoring) or released by ICE. So, we don’t know how many of those were released into the country with a court notice and how many are still in ICE custody.
Also, these figures are for the initial dispositions of migrants encountered at the border, as we’ve explained before. Some of the people released into the country still may be removed later, if they do not qualify for asylum or another form of protection from removal. That would further subtract from the “10 million” the ad falsely suggests have stayed in the country.
Fentanyl and ISIS
The ad also says that there have been 250,000 deaths from fentanyl “on Harris’s watch,” suggesting that those deaths are connected to illegal immigration. Then the ad goes on to say, “ISIS now here,” citing a news story about men who entered the U.S. through the southern border and were later arrested because they may be connected to the Islamic State terrorist group.
First, there is not an exact count of deaths from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is lethal in small doses, a spokesperson for the National Center for Health Statistics told us in an email.
The NCHS does report overdose deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone, a category that includes deaths due to fentanyl or fentanyl analogs. In 2021 and 2022, there were a combined 144,439 overdose deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone, according to finalized NCHS data based on death certificates for U.S. residents. There were an additional 74,702 estimated deaths from the use of those drugs in 2023, according to NCHS provisional data released in May.
Although not official, that’s a total of 219,141 overdose deaths, which could exceed 250,000 once the final figures for 2023 and 2024 are known.
Overdose deaths from non-methadone synthetic opioids have been rising for several years, including during the Trump administration. The estimated deaths for 2021-2023 are about 44% higher than the 152,676 deaths over Trump’s four years as president, and the total under Trump had increased about 306% from the 37,642 deaths during Barack Obama’s last four years as president.
Furthermore, as we’ve written, the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the U.S. by American citizens coming through legal ports of entry — not people illegally crossing the border between those ports.
As for ISIS being “here,” according to the ad, that’s based on a June 14 CNN article about eight Tajikistan nationals who entered the U.S. through the southern border seeking asylum. They were screened by border officials and allowed into the country, but they were later arrested for potentially having ties with the terrorist group.
CNN reported: “Though there is no hard evidence indicating they were sent to the US as part of a terror plot, at least some of the Tajik nationals had expressed extremist rhetoric in their communications, either on social media or in direct private communications that US intelligence was able to monitor, three officials said.”
The arrests “heightened concerns among national security officials that a dangerous affiliate of the now-splintered terror group could potentially carry out an attack on US soil,” CNN said.
But the story noted that the men would be held in federal custody on immigration charges until they are deported after a counterterrorism investigation is completed.
It’s not clear if all eight men entered the country illegally, as at least one of them reportedly used the CBP One app, which launched in January 2023 to accept appointments for migrants who are in Mexico and want to request asylum or parole in the U.S.
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