The phrase “Build the Wall” has once again found its way into the U.S. presidential election campaign. Back when he was running for president in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump used it as a means of tapping into a xenophobic and quasi-isolationist streak in the U.S. public. But this time around, the phrase and the issue of migration overall has taken on added salience: Many Republicans have begun to refer to Trump’s Democratic opponent in this year’s contest, Vice President Kamala Harris, as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” as a way of associating her in voters’ minds with what they characterize as Biden’s failure to rein in migration.
It’s true that Harris was charged with guiding the Biden administration’s policy for stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants at the U.S. southern border. But her actual role was to handle diplomatic relations with the countries of origin of the migrants arriving at the border, not actually to set border-management policy. Nevertheless, the label has stuck, at least among Republicans.
The broader charge by the Trump campaign is that his administration had made progress on reducing the number of individuals attempting to enter the U.S. at the border, only for that progress to be undone by the purported incompetence of the Biden administration, and specifically Harris. Trump is not alone among Republicans calling for tougher measures at the U.S. border, but he in particular has long made addressing the border his signature issue, as reflected in his “Build the Wall” catchphrase.