The Battle of the Biden Border Czars
The question ‘Who’s the boss?’ may be why policies on border releases and Covid-19 make no sense
By Andrew R. Arthur on April 2, 2021
In my last post, I noted: “Vice President Kamala Harris is apparently the new ‘border czar’ — sort of.†My hesitancy was not without reason, because it is not clear whether Harris or former Ambassador Roberta Jacobson is in charge of policy. The confusion may explain why our border policy makes no sense, and is out of step with the rules under which Americans — citizens and legal aliens — are forced to live.
Of course, there is no formal “czar†(a term denoting the autocrat in certain Eastern European countries, most notably the Russian empire), but the executive branch has used the term loosely for almost 60 years to describe an official with a portfolio that includes the duties of other officials.
A “border czar†would therefore have the ability to craft policy in DHS (for CBP, USCIS, ICE, and FEMA), the State Department (to the degree that foreign policy is involved), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, for unaccompanied children and health screenings), and possibly other departments and agencies — including state and local — as well.
I called for the appointment of such a border czar during the “humanitarian and security crisis†at the Southwest border in 2019, and needless to say, we need one now more than we did then: Migrants are dying and children are living in overcrowded shelters, as I noted on March 31. Do we have one, though?
https://cis.org/Arthur/Battle-Biden-Border-Czars
