Kamala Harris is set to visit the border
The vice president will go to El Paso on Friday. She had previously resisted calls to make the stop.
Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to the U.S.-Mexico border this week, amid an unrelenting chorus of criticism from Republicans over her failure to visit there.
Harris, who was tasked by President Joe Biden to lead diplomatic efforts to stem the flow of migrants arriving on the southern border, will visit El Paso, Texas, on Friday, according to sources familiar with the trip. She will be accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Symone Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and chief spokesperson, confirmed the trip in a statement, saying, “Earlier this year, the President asked the Vice President to oversee our diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. As a part of this ongoing work, the Vice President traveled to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month and will travel to El Paso on Friday.”
Her trip, however, was complicated by continued questions over whether she would go to the border to view the situation there. Harris’ response — in which she downplayed the need and noted that she also hadn’t visited Europe — only amplified the criticism.
Harris’ border visit comes just days before former President Donald Trump is set to travel to the border, where he will be joined by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and a group of House Republicans. Shortly after the news of Harris’ visit began circulating, Trump released a statement claiming that if he and Abbott “weren’t going there next week, she would have never gone!”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was one of many Republican lawmakers to pile on Harris for announcing the trip, with Cruz echoing Trump’s assertion that the vice president was merely trying to get out in front of the former president’s upcoming visit. “Suddenly President Trump is going to the border and they realized, ‘Oh crap, we got to do something,’” Cruz told Fox News.
But White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued that Harris’ trip was simply a part of her broader mandate to address the root causes of the increase in migration. At a White House press briefing, Psaki also noted to reporters that she had “said here from this podium — and [Harris] has also said — that, when it was the right time, [Harris] may go to visit the border.”
The number of migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border has soared in the months since the Biden administration took office. In May, more than 180,000 migrants were apprehended at the border, according to monthly figures from Customs and Border Protection.
Of those, the majority — more than 112,000 — were almost immediately expelled. That’s because the Biden administration has continued to use Title 42, a public health order former Trump invoked in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic to kick out migrants without letting them seek asylum.
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