Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly making a trip to the US’s southern border with Mexico, after facing criticism for not visiting. Harris is set to go to the border on Friday, just five days before former President Donald Trump goes there as previously announced.
Harris, whom President Joe Biden made his ‘border czar’, will visit El Paso, Texas, sources with knowledge on the matter told Politico on Wednesday. Harris’ senior adviser and chief spokesman Symone Sanders confirmed it is happening.
‘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,’ Sanders said in a statement. ‘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.’
Harris has responded to criticism that she and Biden have not visited the border by arguing that her focus is tackling the unstable conditions and root causes of migration from Central America.
Earlier this month in her first foreign trip as vice president, Harris visited Mexico and Guatemala, where she met with local officials and urged migrants not to flee to the US.
During a press conference with Guatemala’s president Alejandro Giammattei, Harris hit back at criticism from Republicans for not visiting the border. She said she was finding ways to tackle migration to bring ‘real results’ and that she ‘will continue to be focused on that kind of work, as opposed to grand gestures’.
News of Harris’ border visit comes a week after Trump announced his plans to visit what he called a ‘disaster zone’. Trump accepted Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s invitation to join him for the official visit on June 30.
‘The Biden administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in US history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in US history,’ Trump stated last week. ‘It’s an unmitigated disaster zone.’
Harris will be joined by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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