Op-Ed: Kamala Harris is the border czar. She failed at her job

I have been a Border Patrol agent since 1997, serving under Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, and I served as president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) from 2013 to earlier this year. I have worked alongside U.S. presidents, members of Congress, and elected officials across the political spectrum to find ways to strengthen our border security and give our Border Patrol agents the resources they need to keep America safe.

Let me clear something up: Vice President Kamala Harris is the “Border Czar,” and while she is trying to deny that fact, pretend to care about border security, and distance herself from her failures now, her actions over the last four years have shown a complete disregard for the human suffering that occurs daily at our nation’s southern border.

My job as president of the NBPC was to represent the interests of my agents, both politically and officially. For many years, the National Border Patrol Council remained impartial in presidential politics – but due to President Obama’s second-term failures, in 2016 we felt the need to thoroughly evaluate our prospective elected officials’ plans to secure our border. We vetted all candidates, including Democrats.

Ultimately, we endorsed President Trump because we saw someone who would cut through Washington bureaucracy to implement tangible policies that combat illegal immigration. We were right. President Trump drove illegal border crossings to historic lows not just once, but twice. He began construction of a wall across 400 miles of the border, and illegal crossings plummeted by over 87% in areas where the wall was complete. He deployed nearly 5,000 troops to provide much-needed support to our Border Patrol agents, and Mexico deployed tens of thousands of their own soldiers and national guardsmen to prevent crossings on their side.

Under President Trump, our border was secure, our agents were supported, migrants weren’t suffering at the hands of cartels, and our country was safer.

Fast forward to 2021. I wanted President Biden and Vice President Harris to succeed, and I did my best to work with their administration. When Vice President Harris was charged with leading our country’s response to the worsening border crisis – through Secretary Mayorkas, who assured me all policy, program, and operational suggestions would be passed up the chain – I presented her with several policy proposals to help reduce the influx of migrants, stop cartels from taking advantage of innocent people for monetary gain, and halt deadly fentanyl from entering our communities. She shot them down.

Instead of addressing cartels and the human devastation they cause to migrants and U.S. citizens alike, Border Czar Harris tried to explain away the border crisis as a climate and political instability issue, even though people from over 160 nationalities have tried to enter the country during my tenure as an agent.

Since then, we have watched the results of her inaction unfold before our eyes. For years, independent coyotes paid cartels to move migrants through territory they controlled along the border, and the criminal syndicates stuck to their traditional line of business drug smuggling, which was far more profitable. Cartel leaders, who will commit human atrocities to fund their efforts for power and corruption, are raking in $13 billion in annual profits today compared to $500 million in 2018 – and revenue is just one part of the story.

We all know about the horrific crimes committed against Americans by illegal migrants, but many, including Harris, don’t know about the migrant suffering we see on a daily basis. We see little girls crying who exhibit the signs of rape and abuse. We see migrants robbed of all their possessions. We see smugglers trapping desperate people in vehicles to burn to death, and vehicle accidents that leave victims strewn over the road.

Unfortunately, Harris has not seen the harsh realities of the humanitarian crisis at our border because she only visited the border once, and within a “politically safe” sector. She cares only about optics, not results.

I’ve worked with Vice President Harris, Secretary Mayorkas, and other officials in the Harris-Biden administration. Harris knows that the border crisis is the direct result of her and Biden’s policies, and she knows the solutions, but she refuses to implement them. I’ve questioned whether she is so power-hungry that she is willing to deny reality to appease her political base, or whether she is just dangerously incompetent. I’ve concluded that she is both.

The contrast is clear. Vice President Harris wants to rewrite history and deny the facts now, but the truth is that she owns this border chaos, and she has made clear in her actions that she will not do what is necessary to keep our communities safe if she is elected.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.