Part 3: Was VP Harris Successful in Immigration Diplomacy Efforts? The Data Says Yes.

Migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador plummeted during the course of VP Harris' diplomacy work with the leaders of those countries.

PREFACE: This is Part 3 of a series on border controversies and immigration: Part 1 - VP Kamala Harris was NOT a "border czar", Part 2 - Why false claims like "border czar" stick.

In prior posts, I briefly highlighted the fact that VP Kamala Harris was never a “border czar”, that she was not responsible for managing what was happening at the American border with Mexico and she was, instead, responsible for diplomatic engagement with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to reduce the likelihood that their citizens feel compelled to leave their respective countries. Aaron Reichlin-Milnick, Policy Director at the Immigration Council, has discussed this in numerous tweets (example), and summed this up as follows:

Border policy is about what happens AT the U.S.-Mexico border—once migrants who left their homes get here.

Root causes policy is about what happens in migrants' home countries—hoping to convince people not to leave home.

In March 2024, the White House announced this:

Vice President Kamala Harris and the Partnership for Central America (PCA) today announced more than $1 billion in new private sector commitments, as part of Central America Forward (CAF), a public-private partnership that was created in response to the Vice President’s Call to Action for Northern Central America.

Today’s announcement brings the overall total of new commitments to more than $5.2 billion since May 2021.

To date, CAF and other PCA partners include more than 50 companies and organizations that have made commitments to support inclusive economic growth in the region. These entities represent the financial services, textiles and apparel, agriculture, technology and telecommunications, and nonprofit sectors, among others.

As Reichlin-Milnick points out:

…the White House has been consistently putting out press releases touting VP Harris' root causes work since her original assignment.

Adding to the March 2024 example above, here are examples from July 2021, April 2022, June 2022, and February 2023.

The question is whether her efforts reduced migration from those countries.

Crunching the data, Adam Isacson at WOLA had this to say:

It would be too exuberant to credit the VP's "root causes strategy," but since 2021 there has been a sharp drop in migration from northern Central America—and from almost nowhere else.

Here's Border Patrol + Port of Entry migrant encounters. Table here [link]

Reichlin-Milnick added (with an accompanying chart):

As a matter of fact, numbers from those countries HAVE gone [down] over the last 3 years (and never again reached the record set in May 2019 under the Trump admin). I would caution against attributing this to VP Harris' work, given how much else has gone on.

If the numbers had stayed the same or had gone up, we would have heard endless criticisms that VP Harris’ policies were useless. With the numbers having gone down substantially, it’s not unreasonable to assume that she deserved at least some credit for that outcome!

Kevin Drum was a bit more explicit:

Illegal migration from the three countries Harris targeted declined from 50% of the total to less than 20% today. In raw numbers, migration from those countries peaked at about 100,000 shortly after Harris took over and began declining after that. Total migration today is less than 30,000 per month.

Here’s the accompanying chart from Kevin’s blog.

BOTTOM LINE: If only outcomes matter - and you want to bring politics into judging outcomes - it’s not unreasonable to credit VP Harris for at least part of this result.