Harris is being heavily criticized for not visiting the border
Over fifty House Republicans are pleading President Biden to take Vice President Kamala Harris from her lead role handling the migrant crisis that has taken over the southern border in recent months — accusing her of “inaction” on the crisis because of her failure to visit the border.
“Despite being in the midst of a border crisis this country has not seen in two decades, Vice President Harris has not yet shown adequate interest in observing this crisis first-hand,” the 56 lawmakers, led by Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., wrote. “In the 85 days since the Vice President has been tasked with solving this crisis, she has yet to visit the border and meet with Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and local law enforcement officials.”
Harris was assigned more than eighty days ago to lead diplomatic discussions to solve what the White House calls the “root causes” of the migrant crisis — like poverty, climate change, and violence in Central America.
Harris recently went to both Guatemala and Mexico as part of her duties, meeting with leaders and announcing a number of investments in both countries to tackle those root causes — while pleading with migrants not to come to the border. Harris said her trip was a success, though she was dogged by questions about her failure to visit the border.
The White House and the administration have attempted to clarify that Harris is not in charge of the border exactly and is instead focused on diplomatic discussions, but Republicans have stated it is still important for her to visit the border to really understand the crisis that saw more than 180,000 migrant encounters in May.
Republicans have said the crisis is because the administration’s policies — particularly the rollback of Trump-era policies like border wall construction and the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
The lawmakers who wrote to Biden this week said that, even if root causes are at fault, “the exclusive focus on Central American countries ignores the fact that we see many migrants attempting to illegally cross our southern border from countries all over the world, including Russia, Brazil, Cuba and Haiti.”
“We are also aware of no dramatic changes in Central American countries over the last few months that would result in such a wide gap of encounters at the southern border compared to last year,” they say.
They also slammed the administration for ignoring its own policies that they say attracted the migrants to make the trip north.
“This country cannot afford another minute of inaction from Vice President Harris,” the lawmakers tell Biden as they urge him to replace Harris as the point-person for the crisis. “While you have publicly defended the Vice President, even you must be discouraged with her inaction.”
The Biden administration defended its way of dealing of the crisis this week, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying its strategy was working.
“We have a strategy,” Mayorkas said. “We are executing that strategy, I am confident in the strategy and I am confident in the proposal we have submitted to this Congress to best resource that strategy.”