WASHINGTON (AP/WMAL) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday will make her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, after criticism from members of both parties for failing to go there despite her role leading the Biden administration’s response to a steep increase in migration, sources said.
Harris will visit the El Paso area, according to two sources with knowledge of her plans who were not authorized to discuss the trip before it was announced and spoke on condition of anonymity. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was expected to join Harris.
The announcement comes exactly one week ahead of a scheduled visit by former President Trump to the US-Mexico border with Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Trump responded in a statement: “After months of ignoring the crisis at the southern border, it is great that we got Kamala Harris to finally go and see the tremendous destruction and death that they’ve created–a direct result of Biden ending my very tough but fair border policies. Harris and Biden were given the strongest border in American history. And now, it is by far the worst in American History. If Governor Abbott and I weren’t going there next week, she would have never gone!”
Harris is leading U.S. efforts to identify and address the root causes of immigration. On her visit to Guatemala and Mexico this month, she urged Central Americans not to try to reach the U.S. border. She tried to give people a sense of hope that would encourage them to stay home.
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