Contradictory policies, an apparent lack of leadership and insults between cabinet members. An exclusive report from Axios exposed the ineffectiveness of the Biden Administration in addressing the border case from within.
According to the agency, President Joe Biden, partly due to his irritability, has made no high-profile member of his administration want to take charge of the border issue since the immigration crisis exploded in the first months of his mandate in 2021.
"There are definite incentives ... to not be the person who owns the scary issue with no solutions," a source told Axios. "If you're the person briefing the president, you get to piss him off every day."
On one occasion in late January 2023, on Air Force One, President Biden erupted in anger at his immigration aides because they failed to immediately provide him with some confusing updates on the situation at the border.
That situation exemplifies the tense situation within the White House around the immigration crisis, one of the issues that has most damaged Biden's image in the last three years.
Present at this meeting were former Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O'Malley Dillon, National Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall and other immigration officials.
Sherwood-Randall, in particular, was delegated a great responsibility in the border crisis. However, the official was described as a worker with many skills but with minimal experience in the immigration issue, sources explained to Axios.
In addition to Biden's irritability against his staff, a fact reported in several press reports, the lack of leadership within the administration to confront the border crisis has also been palpable and a problem without a solution to date.
Kamala Harris, named the government's "border czar," limited her immigration task to addressing the factors that drove people to leave countries in the region such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. That's as far as their functions ended. For Axios sources, this was a demonstration of political negligence on the part of Harris, who demonstrated an inability or lack of conviction to fill a leadership vacuum left by Biden himself.
"She's been at best ineffective, and at worst sporadically engaged and not seeing it was her responsibility. It's an opportunity for her, and she didn't fill the breach," a former Biden Administration official told Axios.
But in addition to the lack of leadership from Biden and Harris, or the president's constant warnings towards his staff, the internal confrontations between administration officials have also been a significant obstacle when trying to control the border crisis.
For example, if one official tried to lead the government's response amid the border crisis, it was Susan Rice, a domestic policy adviser who ended up being the central coordinator of the administration's approach to the border.
Rice was described as practically the only one within the senior echelons of the Biden Administration who wanted to address the critical situation at the border, but her attitude, according to the report, was problematic.
For example, in private, Rice called her cabinet colleague Xavier Becerra a "bitch-ass" and "idiot" for not being able to resolve specific issues related to border policy.
Likewise, the report indicates that Rice not only insulted the Secretary of Health and Human Services but also confronted Vice President Harris, Advisor Sherwood-Randall and other officials while coordinating the government's border response from January 2021 to May 2023.
Government sources told Axios that Rice's insults against Becerra arose after the official failed to secure additional shelter spaces for migrant children. In fact, in a meeting where Biden reprimanded Becerra, Rice herself reportedly asked Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas not to "save" the HHS secretary from the strong reprimand.
The report makes it clear that the White House is, right now, a ticking time bomb due to the border crisis—a problem without a solution in more than three years of Biden and his team.
