Illegal immigration from the region has worsened, China has gained a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, and rumored investments have failed to materialize.
Illegal immigration from the region has worsened, China has gained a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, and rumored investments have failed to materialize.
D uring her first — and so far, only — sit-down interview as the Democratic nominee for President, Vice President Kamala Harris touted her work addressing the root causes of migration in Central America, despite an unprecedented, record-breaking surge of illegal immigration during her time as border czar.
Harris’s work in the region has been her most visible involvement in U.S. foreign policy besides the border. The problem for her campaign, however, is that Harris failed her foreign-policy test.
During Harris’s first foreign trip as vice president in June 2021, she instantly turned into a sad meme. When standing in Guatemala City, she told migrants “do not come” to the United States. CNN described the trip as “rocky,” and the results have been disastrous. Since Harris first touched down in Central America, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 7 million illegal immigrants, including 750,000 Guatemalans, at the southwest border.
On her watch, the number of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans leaving their homes for the U.S.-Mexico border increased significantly. In the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, nearly twice as many migrants from those countries attempted to enter the United States illegally compared with the same period under former president Donald Trump.
During the Trump administration, the United States signed agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that required migrants traveling through those countries to claim asylum there or face potential removal once they reached the U.S. These agreements allowed the U.S. to efficiently process illegal immigrants at the border, prevented the U.S. asylum system from being overwhelmed, and deterred immigrants from making the dangerous journey. A few weeks after the Biden-Harris administration took office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken terminated these commonsense agreements.
The Chinese Communist Party has also gained ground in the region. In January 2022, Harris attended the inauguration of newly elected Honduran president Xiomara Castro and went out of her way to praise the self-described democratic socialist despite her campaign promise to cut ties with Taiwan. Two months after meeting with Harris, Castro announced formal ties with Beijing. Castro’s government is now negotiating a free-trade agreement with Beijing and seeking $20 billion in Chinese investment. Meanwhile, El Salvador repealed its trade deal with Taiwan in 2023 and is actively negotiating a trade deal with the CCP.
Recently, Castro was one of the first leaders to congratulate Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on his massive electoral fraud against the Venezuelan people. And just last week, Castro unilaterally terminated the U.S.-Honduras extradition treaty, which will hinder efforts to bring drug traffickers and other criminal organizations operating in Honduras to justice in U.S. courts.
Harris supporters will counter that her Central America Forward (CAF) initiative has claimed credit for $5.2 billion in private-sector investment commitments in the region. That figure is only one-quarter of the investment that Honduras alone is seeking from China, and the State Department reports that only one-fifth of those billions have materialized as of June. And while CAF’s purported claim of creating 70,000 jobs might sound successful at first glance, that figure is less than 4 percent of the migrants who left for the U.S. since 2021. It’s also a drop in the bucket for three countries that, combined, have a labor force of nearly 15 million workers.
Encouraging economic development and improving security in Central America has been a long-standing, bipartisan priority. But under Vice President Harris, illegal immigration from these countries has worsened, China has gained a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, and rumored investments have failed to materialize.
As border czar, Harris has failed to address the biggest root cause of the border crisis: her own administration’s open-border policies that openly encouraged a record number of migrants from nearly 100 countries to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
The next administration should secure the border by immediately ending the failed Biden-Harris policies, negotiating new asylum cooperative agreements, and actively encouraging our partners in the Western Hemisphere to address the illegal-immigration crisis before it gets to our border.
And instead of flashy initiatives that do not deliver on their promises, the U.S. must also offer competitive free-market alternatives to CCP investment that create jobs here at home and bring more prosperity to our partners in Central America.
Connor Pfeiffer is a senior adviser at the Forum for American Leadership. Jonah Wendt is the policy adviser for Advancing American Freedom.