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President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem.

Biden made the announcement as he and Harris met at the White House on Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas and other immigration advisers to discuss the increase in migrants, including many unaccompanied minors, arriving at the border in recent weeks.

In delegating the matter to Harris, Biden is seeking to replicate a dynamic that played out when he served as President Barack Obama's vice president. Obama turned to Biden in his first term to lead the White House effort to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq and oversee implementation of stimulus in response to the Great Recession.

When she speaks, she speaks for me, Biden said, noting her past work as California's attorney general makes her specially equipped to lead the administration's response.

Biden, who has faced stiff criticism from Republicans over the increased flow of migrants, is hoping to show Americans he's taking the situation at the border seriously. He also wants to prevent the growing humanitarian and political challenge from overshadowing his administration's ambitious legislative agenda.

But the high-profile assignment for Harris, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and is expected to run for the White House again in the future, could be politically fraught.

Needless to say, the work will not be easy, Harris said. But it is important work.

Harris is tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders, administration officials said. Shes also tasked with developing and implementing a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.

Biden suggested President Donald Trump s decision to cut $450 million funding in 2019 to the region was partly to blame for the situation.

Among the other reasons for the current increase: the thousands of Central American migrants already stuck at the border for months and the persistent scourge of gang violence afflicting the Northern Triangle countries.

Still, the numbers of both unaccompanied minors and families encountered at the border are lower than they were at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019.

For Harris, the assignment gives her the first big opportunity to step to the front of the stage on a matter of enormous consequence for the administration. As the first Black woman elected vice president, Harris arrived on the job as a trailblazer. It has remained opaque how Biden would utilize her.

The move echoes not only Obama's decision to deputize Biden but also Trump naming Vice President Mike Pence to lead his coronavirus task force and President Bill Clinton handing Vice President Al Gore environmental and technology portfolios early in his presidency.

It's been a mixed bag for vice presidents in recent history who have been made the point person on delicate matters, said Joel Goldstein, the author of The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden.

Pence's efforts on the coronavirus were stymied by Trump's hijacking of the task force's daily briefings early in the pandemic. Dick Cheney, who had been charged with leading George W. Bush's search for a vice president only to take the spot himself, carved out what was seen by many critics as a shadow presidency in which he had an outsized influence on shaping Bush's national security policies.

And Gore faced headwinds from Republicans in Congress who were reluctant to give him a win ahead of his unsuccessful 2000 run for the White House.

Some of the risk versus reward depends to some extent on the vice president's relationship with the president, Goldstein said. Whether or not the president had their back. Whether the presidents going to allow you to be in a position to accomplish things and be perceived to accomplish things.

Biden made the announcement as a delegation of White House officials and members of Congress was traveled to the southern border on Wednesday to tour a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, where more than 750 migrant teenagers are being held.

The Biden administration has in recent weeks moved to open more than 10,000 new beds across the Southwest in convention centers and former oilfield camps. It notified Congress on Wednesday that it will open a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person site at the San Diego convention center. HHS is also opening a second site in Carrizo Springs and received approval from the Defense Department Wednesday to begin housing teenagers at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.

While acknowledging a big problem with the rising numbers of migrants, Rep. Norma Torres D-Calif., one of five lawmakers to tour the facility Wednesday, credited the Biden administration with treating young migrants far more humanely than the Trump administration.

In an interview after the tour, Torres described children accommodated four to a room, and said she saw no signs of overcrowding. The young people attend school, have access to health care and are given weekly COVID-19 tests. Lawmakers were told 1 in 10 children are testing positive for the virus, but none at the facility had been hospitalized, she said.

When I look at those kids, I see myself, said Torres, an immigrant from Guatemala who arrived in the U.S. with her family as a child.

The White House faced criticism for limiting media access to Wednesdays tour, keeping it to just one TV crew. It has still not allowed media to enter Border Patrol facilities where large numbers of children are detained or HHS sites that it rapidly opened under pressure. The Carrizo Springs facility was established in 2019 during the Trump administration and re-opened in February.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is leading a separate delegation of GOP senators to the border later this week, decried the lack of press access as a muzzling of the media by the Democratic administration.

Joe Biden doesnt want you to see, Cruz told reporters at the Capitol.

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Merchant reported from Houston and Lemire from New York. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

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Biden taps VP Harris to lead response to border challenges - The Independent

The Biden administration on Wednesday -- for the first time -- let journalists into a Texas border facility housing young migrants who crossed the southern border, after weeks of denying access to members of the news media. But it has continued to keep reporters out of other, detention-like facilities filled well over their capacities.

A reporter and camera crew were permitted on Wednesday to enter a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement.

They accompanied a delegation of White House officials and members of Congress touring the facility for minors who have arrived at the border unaccompanied by parents. They saw intake and dining areas, as well as a medical clinic, but they were not allowed to speak to any of the minors.

Unaccompanied immigrant children are seen walking across a parking lot in a frame grab from pool video shot during a tour by White House officials and members of Congress of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Carrizo Springs Influx Care Facility for unaccompanied immigrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas, March 24, 2021.

The administration granted the press access a day before President Joe Biden is scheduled to hold the first formal, solo news conference of his presidency, where he is likely to face questions about why the administration was keeping the news media out.

It also came the same day Biden said he was tapping Vice President Kamala Harris to lead his administration's efforts to stem the flow of migration from Central America and just as the president -- for the first time -- brought reporters into a White House meeting on immigration.

The influx of unaccompanied minors on the border has posed a potent political threat to the president, who has come under fire from Republicans for his handling of the situation.

Children play soccer in a frame grab from pool video shot during a tour by White House officials and members of Congress of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Carrizo Springs Influx Care Facility for unaccompanied immigrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas, March 24, 2021.

Used during the Trump administration but shuttered in July 2019, the Carrizo Springs facility was reopened last month to accommodate the increasing number of unaccompanied children crossing the border. Reporters had been allowed in under former President Donald Trump, although recording devices were not allowed inside.

There are currently 766 boys ranging in age from 13 to 17 years old in the facility, which has never reached its capacity of 952, officials told the reporter, who represented several U.S. television networks, including ABC News. While the journalists were not allowed to speak with the children, whom they saw walking around the grounds and playing soccer and basketball, the members of Congress touring the facility were.

Officials said the facility is not at capacity since they have to set aside space for teens who test positive for COVID-19 when they arrive at the facility and that 108 have tested positive, according to the reporter.

The group was also taken to an empty classroom, recorded video of piles of clothing for new arrivals and saw employees walking around outside buildings on the ground.

Children play basketball in a frame grab from pool video shot during a tour by White House officials and members of Congress of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Carrizo Springs Influx Care Facility for unaccompanied immigrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas, March 24, 2021.

The administration has continued to block access to other facilities along the border that actually have far surpassed their capacities. The White House has cited concerns over privacy and the coronavirus pandemic.

The Carrizo Springs HHS facility, and others like it, represent the second step for many unaccompanied minors picked up by U.S. authorities on the southern border.

First, they are typically taken to detention-like facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where they are, by law, only supposed to remain for up to 72 hours before being transferred to HHS shelters or sent to live with sponsors. Those facilities do not have the same capacity for dealing with children that the HHS ones do.

In recent weeks, the CBP facilities have become overwhelmed with thousands of minors waiting to be transferred -- a record -- as HHS has struggled to provide enough space. HHS has recently said it was opening special intake facilities at convention centers in Dallas and San Diego to help take more minors out of CBP custody.

The department plans to open a second facility in Carrizo Springs and is bringing another similar facility online in Pecos, Texas, to house a total of 2,500 migrant kids.

As of this week, there were approximately 10,500 minors in HHS custody, with nearly 5,000 in CBP custody.

A frame grab from pool video shot during a tour by White House officials and members of Congress of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Carrizo Springs Influx Care Facility for unaccompanied immigrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas, March 24, 2021.

The first glimpses inside a crowded CBP facility came Monday from Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who released photographs showing migrants packed into a CBP overflow facility in Donna, Texas. The next day, CBP released its own video showing the inside of the Donna facility and another one in El Paso, Texas.

Under Trump, CBP officials did allow members of the media to visit a port of entry processing center and border patrol station, but due to privacy concerns, cameras were not allowed to film the interior areas.

When then-Vice President Mike Pence took the press with him to two migrant detention centers in July 2019 -- with the Trump administration under fire for crowded, unsanitary conditions there -- the visit generated dramatic images of Pence standing before hundreds of migrants crammed into cages.

Vice President Mike Pence surveys the holding facility in Donna, Texas, July 12, 2019.

"We're also open to providing access there," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday when pressed on why the administration was still keeping members of the news media out of the other facilities. "And this is just the first step in the process of providing greater access to the media."

Republicans have criticized the Biden team for, they say, being unprepared for migrants coming to the United States in response to Biden rolling back former President Donald Trump's restrictive immigration policies.

The White House, meanwhile, has pointed fingers at Trump -- saying his administration exacerbated the situation by systematically ripping families apart, treating people fleeing violence and poverty with inhumanity and neglecting or dismantling the system set up to deal with them.

Trump's administration turned away minors and separated children from their parents as a matter of policy -- and hundreds still remain apart as a consequence. Biden, on the other hand, has made clear he does not want to turn away the children and teenagers arriving at the border alone.

ABC News' Quinn Owen contributed reporting.

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Biden administration allows access to border facility -- but not ones over capacity - ABC News

DONALD Trump got bad advice that Mike Pence had powers to overturn the election result, the Vice-Presidents former chief of staff has said.

During the Capitol Hillsiege, rioters appeared to scream "hang Mike Pence" after Trump blamed the "furious" Pence for not blocking Joe Biden's win.

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The MAGA fans stormed Congress as lawmakers were voting on certifying Joe Biden as the then President-elect on January 6.

Mark Short has now told CNN that Pence had a strong viewpoint as to what his role was supposed to be that day.

I think unfortunately thepresident was getting bad advicefrom people who had articulatedthat the Vice President wouldhave some extraordinary powersthat had never been used beforein the history of our country, he said.

He went on to say that the poor legal advice that thepresident was receivingIthink led him to believe that there was a different role thevice president could play onthat day.

As the rioters poured into the Capitol, the former Vice President was whisked out of the building.

The apparent chants for Pence to be hanged came afterTrumprepeatedly called for Pence to block Congress from certifying Biden as the winner but the VP said he would not do so.

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Republican Sen Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma toldTulsa World that Pence was outraged at Trump's calls to block the certification of the election.

"Ive never seen Pence as angry as he was today," Inhofe told the news outlet on Tuesday.

He said, After all the things Ive done for (Trump).

Trump had made repeated calls for Pence to block the vote.

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During his speech at the "Save America March" which preceded the Capitol Hill riots on Trump urged Pence to "do the right thing".

"I hope Mike is gonna do the right thing," Trump said. "I hope so, I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election."

Trump said: "Mike Pence has to agree to send it back."

As Trump spoke,Pence released a statement, stating he would not block Congress from Certifying Biden as the president-electand did not have the authority to do so.

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"It is my considered judgement that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not," Pence said.

Following the riots, one official toldThe Washington Postthat Trump was so angry at Pence that he couldnt see straight.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, aRepublican, hailed Pence for his "courage" in upholding the Constitution.

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Trump got bad advice thinking Mike Pence could save election with Congress certification, VPs ex-chief of s - The Sun

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Friday pilloried a Minnesota attorney who sued former Vice President Mike Pence in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, referring him to the Committee on Grievances for possible disciplinary action.

U.S. District Judge for the District of ColumbiaJames Boasberg,an appointee ofBarack Obama, said attorney Erick Kaardal failed to sufficiently allayed the Courts concerns regarding potential bad faith in filing the widely criticized December action that named Pence, Congress, several swing states, and even the Electoral College as defendants. The lattermost caused quite a stir amid the legal community, as the Electoral Collegeisnt actually an entityyou can sue.

Boasberg, who last month ordered Kaardal to submit a Declaration to the court explaining why he should not be referred to the committee, provided a litany of reasons for the decision in a four-page order that categorized the Kaardals complaint as little more that political grandstanding.

The judge began by noting that Kaardals Declaration spent most of its time supporting the suits theory on the unconstitutionality of the federal and state statutes at issue but failed to directly address why. Despite explicitly disclaiming any theory of fraud, Kaardal used scores of pages regurgitating false and debunked claims of fraud, the judge noted.

The only reason the Court can see for the Complaint to spend 70+ pages on irrelevant allegations of fraud, not one instance of which persuaded any court in any state to question the elections outcome, is political grandstanding, he wrote. The Response never explains otherwise.

Filed on behalf of the uber-conservative Wisconsin Voters Alliance, the suit which one legal commentatorreferred toas the single dumbest election lawsuit of the entire cycle alleged that state legislatures in every state were constitutionally required to approve the certification of election results before they could be formally counted by Congress. (Generally, an elections official, such as a Secretary of State, handles such certifications with observation by the major political parties.)

Boasberg also said the timing of the filing reflected that Kaardal was merely using the legal system to generate headlines, not make a serious legal challenge.

[I]f Plaintiffs were in good faith challenging the constitutionality of federal and state statutes that have long been on the books, why wait until two weeks before the electoral votes were to be counted? he wrote.This claim, just like the one attacking the federal election statutes, could have been brought any time over the past years (or, in some cases, decades). It is fanciful that counsel needed to worry whether states would in fact take the allegedly unlawful action of certifying their election results without the state legislatures involvement, as state statutes required them to do just that. To wait as counsel did smacks once again of political gamesmanship and may be relevant to the Committee.

The Court also highlighted the Kaardals lackluster attempt to serve the named defendants or request a hearing as further evidence the suit was frivolous.

A suit that truly wished a merits opinion before January 6 would have given notice to all Defendants as soon as (or before) the Complaint and Motion were filed on December 22, 2020, wrote the judge. Plaintiffs never did this or ever contacted the Court about a hearing prior to its January 4 Opinion, leading the Court to conclude that they wished only to file a sweeping Complaint filled with baseless fraud allegations and tenuous legal claims to undermine a legitimate presidential election.

Read the order below.

Wisconsin Voter Alliance Kardaal Order by Law&Crime on Scribd

[image via YouTube screengrab]

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Judge Orders Pro-Trump Attorney Who Sued Mike Pence to Face Grievance Committee Over Baseless Fraud Allegations and Tenuous Legal Claims - Law &...

Sacha Baron Cohen and the editors of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm reveal newfound inspiration behind editing the sequel in the form of Mike Pence.

The editors ofBorat Subsequent Moviefilmhave a clip of Mike Penceto thank forthe story idea of the film.Sacha Baron Cohen'slatestmovie was released fourteen years after its popular predecessor,Borat,with Cohen reprising his title character Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakhstani reporter who visits America once again to give his daughter away to Pence. The film featured breakout newcomer Maria Bakalova as Borat's daughter Tutar.

The sequel to 2006 mockumentary film was shot in secret from the end of 2019 to throughout 2020 and was set on being released before Election Day.Much like its predecessor, the sequel has had it shares of success and controversies, becomingone of the most streamedfilms oflast yearwhile also having conflicts with its featured subjects, most notably Pence and arevealing scene involving Rudy Giuliani. Due to the major events occurring during filming, theplot of the film kept evolving to fit the relevancy of the story and thepeople involvedhad to stay on their feet witha short amount of time before releasing the finished product.

Related:Borat 2: How Every Person Has Reacted To Being Fooled By Sacha Baron Cohen

Per Deadline, Cohendisclosed that editors Craig Alpert and James Thomas found a moment while editing thatled to the story of the film.That moment comes duringone of the many stunning feats featured in the movie where Borat goes to the CPAC convention disguised as Donald Trumpwith his daughter while the former Vice President is giving a speech regarding the coronavirus cases in the United States. Despitehaving that scene be the original ending of the movie, Cohen and the editors realized that there was more to the story they were trying to tell that examined the issues deeper. During an interview with Crew Call podcast, Cohen explained whythis particular moment changed the course of the whole film:

"CPAC was the culmination of act 3: I rescue Tutar from Giuliani. She trips while Im being chased and Mike Pence is speaking and thats the end of the movie. Weve been shut down due to Covid. Myself and my producer Monica Levinson, we decide to keep the edit going.James (Thomas) says You gotta see this!' Cast your mind back to March and people were treating Covid like it was a tropical storm[We] had this epiphany. This is a movie were releasing before the Election and making to show our protest against Trump and Trumpism and the conspiracies that the government was propagating. We see the Vice President spreading this calamitous lie that were ready for Covid. We knew the numbers would get to the hundreds of thousands in America.

"It was a way to show the incompetence of the Trump government. This was an emotional father-daughter movie, this had questions about the patriarchy, but fundamentally it was a catalog of wrongdoings of Trump and Trumpism in 90 minutes. There was a realization that his greatest, most catastrophic wrongdoing was the willful incompetence on Covid that led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and here he is, the Vice President, on the day hes been put in charge of the Covid task force saying Its alright guys! Weve got it under control! That moment that these editors found transforms the whole movie, and transforms the whole production.

Since the production was shut down due to the pandemic, Thomas and Alpert had to assess the hours of footage alreadyshot to edit everything down to a reasonable length for a movie. And it is usually during the editing process where the basis of the film is put into focus, which putsincredible pressureand responsibility towards the editors. With the former Vice President blatantly spewing dangerous lies about a significant illness thatwould impact millions, it makes sense to shift the narrative of the sequel that involves a worldwide catastrophe to blend in with the borderline humor and controversial jokes.

Despite the popularity of Borat and the courageous stunts he pulls, it is refreshing to see him assert himselfinto the transformative eventsof the current times, howevercomicalthat may be.And the editors have done a wonderful job maintaining thehumorof the filmwhile also telling a much bigger story. While Borat Subsequent Moviefilmis at its very essence a comedy movie, it does shine a light on the serious subjects that shape society as a whole and reveals the tremendous effects it has on individuals; all ofwhich just makes the process and creation of the film all the more impressive.

Next:Borat 3 Unlikely To Happen Any Time Soon

Source: Deadline

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Borat 2 Editors Found The Movie's Story In A Particular Mike Pence Clip - Screen Rant