There is dysfunction inside the VP’s office, aides and administration officials say. And it’s emanating from the top.
When Vice President Kamala Harris finally made the decision to visit the Mexico border last week, people inside her own office were blindsided by the news.
For days, aides and outside allies had been calling and texting with each other about the political fallout that a potential trip would entail. But when it became knownthat she was going to El Paso, it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside the VP’s office charged with crafting the messaging across the administration.
(CNN)In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border.
Two White House officials familiar with the dynamic said Harris and her aides have emphasized internally that they want to focus on conditions in Central America that push migrants to the US southern border, as President Joe Biden tasked her to do. A record number of unaccompanied children crossed into the US this spring, and the throngs of desperate minors present a heart-rending problem as well as a political one.
Biden announced Harris’ new assignment on March 24 ahead of an immigration meeting in the White House State Dining Room, telling reporters that he had asked the vice president “because she’s the most qualified person to do it, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, and the countries that can help, need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”
After the announcement, Harris’ aides appeared to “panic,” according to one of the officials, out of concern that her assignment was being mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked to the border, which at the time was facing a growing number of arrivals. But another White House official pushed back on the sentiment, saying the vice president’s team wasn’t panicked.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has finally addressed the border crisis — but only to accuse anyone using the term “surge” of pushing a “white supremacist” philosophy.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has repeatedly been accused of ducking the dangerously overcrowded migrant detention centers despite saying they were akin to “concentration camps” under the previous administration.
She initially appeared outraged when asked during an Instagram Live ask-me-anything session why she was “not addressing the border crisis and the kids in cages like you used to” — asking after a pause, “Are you for real?”
“It’s not a border crisis. It’s an Imperialism crisis, it’s a climate crisis, it’s a trade crisis. And also it’s a carceral crisis,” she said, without directly addressing the kids-in-cages allegation itself.
