Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to travel to Texas this weekend as part of a Democrat fundraising campaign in the state. However, it is unclear whether she intends to visit the Texas border with Mexico.
In June 2021, Harris visited a migrant processing center at the Texas border, which has been her only visit to the region since becoming vice president. On Saturday, Oct. 8, she will be attending the Texas Democrat Party’s annual Johnson-Jordan Reception and will meet with people to discuss abortion policies in the state,
The Hill reported.
In an interview with the
New York Post, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said he hasn’t been made aware of any potential visits by Harris in his district, which stretches from Del Rio to just outside of El Paso.
“I don’t understand why the vice president just won’t take an hour plane ride to the border and just listen, talk to people, just show up and say, ‘Hey, we are here to help.’ Just say, ‘The administration hasn’t abandoned you’ … something!” Gonzales said.
Harris was appointed as the border czar by President Joe Biden in March 2021, who insisted she was the “most qualified person” to identify “root causes” of the border crossing surge. Under Harris, the country has seen a record number of illegal aliens enter the United States at the southern border with Mexico.
Since March 2021, Border Patrol agents have consistently reported over 100,000 encounters every month, according to
data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
For fiscal year 2022 through the end of August, agents reported over 2.15 million encounters, which is higher than the 1.73 million encounters reported for fiscal year 2021 and the 458,088 encounters reported during fiscal year 2020.
Korea Visit, Transporting Migrants to Washington
Harris’s reluctance to visit the Texas border has been contrasted with her visit to the Demilitarized Zone separating North Korea and South Korea during her recent trip to that region. This attracted immense criticism, especially from GOP members who questioned why Harris was not visiting the U.S.–Mexico border.“Border Czar Kamala Harris is traveling thousands of miles to visit the DMZ in Korea instead of visiting our own southern border. Our country is literally being invaded and she doesn’t care,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said in a Sept. 27
tweet.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been transporting illegal immigrants from Texas to Washington, near Harris’s home. On Oct. 3, about 50 illegal aliens were dropped off in front of the vice president’s Washington residence.
“Our supposed border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, has yet to even visit the border to see firsthand the impact of the open border policies she has helped implement, even going so far as to claim the border is ‘secure,'” Abbott said recently, according to the
Houston Chronicle.
The border crisis is also having an impact on politics. A recent Reuters/Ipsos
poll showed the majority of respondents believed the GOP was the best party to address the problems of immigration and crime rates.
