Three months after being put in charge of the immigrant crisis at the U.S. southern border, Vice President Kamala Harris has announced that she will be visiting the border on Friday.
Harris, who was tapped by President Joe Biden as "border czar" on March 24, has faced criticism for not previously visiting the southern border despite repeated requests, The Christian Post reports.
On Wednesday, the Office of the Vice President sent out an email to the press confirming that Harris will visit El Paso, Texas, on Friday. She will be accompanied by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
"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," the email stated. "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."
During her visit to Guatemala earlier this month, Harris again received criticism for encouraging migrants not to come to the southern border.
"I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making the dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border — do not come, do not come," Harris said at a press conference at the time. "There are legal methods by which migration can and should occur, but we, as one of our priorities, will discourage illegal migration. And I believe if you come to our border, you will be turned back."
According to Customers and Border Patrol Statistics, there have been 1.1 million enforcement actions at the border against undocumented immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally in the 2021 fiscal year so far. The types of encounters include "... arrests of individuals with criminal convictions and individuals who have been apprehended multiple times crossing the border illegally."
The announcement of Harris' visit to the southern border comes a week after former President Trump announced that he, too, will be visiting the border. Trump will be visiting the border with Texas Governor Greg Abbott on June 30.
In a statement released by his Save American organization on Wednesday, Trump criticized Harris, contending that the vice president would have never made the trip if Trump did not previously announce his plan to visit the border.
"If Governor Abbott and I weren't going there next week, she would have never gone!" he asserted.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker/Staff
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
