Vice President Kamala Harris has shown a long-standing commitment to the rule of law and supports a bipartisan border security bill. On the other hand, anti-immigration MAGA extremists in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), have played politics with the issue of immigration—even making up a nonexistent immigration role—but shown little interest in actually fixing the broken immigration system.
Contrary to what her detractors have long alleged, Vice President Harris was never placed in charge of the U.S.-Mexico border; rather, she has taken on a challenging task similar to the effort then-Vice President Joe Biden undertook during the later stages of the Obama-Biden administration: overseeing U.S. efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America.
The Biden-Harris administration, working closely with partners across the Americas, has taken multiple steps over the past few years to address the historic levels of irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere. These layered efforts to mitigate, manage, and order migration have, in recent months, led to fewer encounters between ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border than there were in 2019 during the comparable time period.
Confronting a new, post-pandemic, hemisphere-wide irregular migration challenge
From 2014 to 2020, increases in irregular migration to the United States were driven primarily by displacement from the Northern Triangle countries; migration was again on the rise in early 2021 as countries came out of peak pandemic shutdowns. As a result, the Biden-Harris administration focused its initial efforts there. Saddled with deeply unreliable partner governments in all three countries, Vice President Harris chose to emphasize cooperation with civil society and the private sector through the creation of the Partnership for Central America (PCA).
However, as decimated countries across Latin America and the Caribbean emerged from the pandemic and the U.S. economic recovery outpaced the rest of the world, two profound shifts occurred. First, the region faced never-before-seen levels of displacement, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the world’s displaced peoples despite being home to just 8 percent of the world’s population. Second, migration patterns shifted and a new set of countries—Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—became major sources of irregular migration to the United States. The inability of the U.S. government to safely and effectively repatriate encountered migrants to those four countries exacerbated the challenge of managing such migration.
In response, the current administration’s focus evolved to leading a hemisphere-wide effort to mitigate, manage, and order migration through creating and adopting the landmark Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection alongside 21 partners from across the region—notably the first time such a hemispheric-wide agreement directly involved the United States and Canada.
Partnering on economic and migration solutions across the Americas
Under the LA declaration, the Biden-Harris administration has secured unprecedented cooperation to curb irregular migration. Today, for example, Mexico is doing more to stem irregular migration to the United States than it has ever done before. The administration also created alternatives to irregular migration so that individuals fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—the primary sources of instability in the hemisphere—could come to the United States in a sponsored, orderly fashion and be able to legally work shortly after arrival so as to contribute to U.S. prosperity and enhance stability in their home countries without delay.
Critically, the LA declaration built on successful migrant integration efforts in Latin America and spurred multiple countries to create new temporary legal status programs for migrants in order to stabilize these populations and to provide an alternative to migrating further. In May 2024, countries such as Ecuador, Colombia, and Costa Rica at the third ministerial meeting on the LA declaration announced regularization programs for various irregular migrant populations—building on the nearly 2 million Venezuelans who had already been provided status in Colombia alone. Today, more than 80 percent of those displaced in Latin America and the Caribbean have found a home in the region and have not proceeded to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Likewise, since its inception, the PCA has stimulated $5.2 billion in private sector investments designed to promote sustainable job creation and economic growth to help stabilize the populations across Central America’s Northern Triangle countries. So far in fiscal year 2024, compared with fiscal year 2021, there has been a 14 percent drop in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection average monthly encounters from Guatemala, a 39 percent drop from El Salvador, and a 50 percent drop from Honduras.
Combined with a recent executive order signed by President Biden related to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border and the use of the statutory immigration parole authority to build new, lawful pathways, these layered efforts to mitigate, manage, and order migration have, in recent months, reduced encounters between ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border to below what they were during the same months in 2019.
Conclusion
Achieving sustainable order at the U.S.-Mexico border—something all Americans rightly expect—is possible only through working on migration at all points along the migratory chain that extends into Latin America and well beyond. Vice President Harris’ work in northern Central America and the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts through the LA Declaration have set the United States up for precisely that kind of sustained order—but only if elected leaders turn away from weaponizing immigration and work on real solutions.
About the authors: Dan Restrepo is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Tom Jawetz is a senior fellow for immigration policy at American Progress. Debu Gandhi is the senior director of immigration policy at American Progress. Joel Martinez is a senior policy analyst for national security and international policy at American Progress. Silva Mathema is the director for immigration policy at American Progress.
This article was published by the Center for American Progress.
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