In response to stepped-up Republican criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris’s record overseeing migration and the southern border, Axios published a would-be fact check alleging that GOP characterizations of Harris as the Biden administration’s “Border Czar” are false. “The Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had,” the outlet insisted, going on to quote former Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson’s claim to Fox News that Harris was “not the border czar” and was actually tasked with handling “diplomacy with Central America.”
The problem is that Axios has published several articles characterizing Harris’s White House portfolio as overseeing the migration crisis at the southern border — and in some cases even used the term “border czar” to refer to her role, even if “czar” wasn’t (and rarely is) an official title.
In an article from April 2021 covering Harris’s visits to Mexico and Guatemala to address migration levels, Axios wrote that the Vice President was “appointed by Biden as border czar.” Another article, covering her appointment to the role in March 2021, was headlined “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.” The latter article was authored by Axios politics reporter Stef Knight — the same journalist who wrote today’s piece denying that Harris was placed in charge of the border!
Will Axios correct the record about Harris’s role, which, to quote an Associated Press report from her initial appointment, was to “lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border”?