U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris attends a high-speed Internet infrastructure event on June 3, 2021 in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House, Washington.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to visit the United States’ southern border with Mexico on Friday, nearly three months after President Joe Biden instructed her to stem the influx of migrants.
Republicans have pounded Harris and Biden for refusing to visit the border in person during the first few months of their administration due to the large number of migrants arriving there.
Harris will travel to El Paso, Texas, her spokeswoman Symone Sanders said in a statement Wednesday. Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas will accompany them on the trip, said Sanders.
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Harris traveled to Mexico and Guatemala earlier this month to meet with leaders as part of her diplomatic mission to tackle the root causes of the surge in migration.
Harris’s office announcement on Wednesday failed to please its Republican critics, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who said El Paso was not “the place of crisis”.
“She goes where the problem doesn’t peak,” Cruz told Fox News.
Their trip will be less than a week before former President Donald Trump, who is aiming for another White House candidacy in 2024, is scheduled to visit the southern border. Texas Governor Greg Abbott plans to go with him.
In a statement on Wednesday, Trump paid tribute to urging Harris to make the trip, claiming, “If Governor Abbott and I hadn’t gone next week, it would never have gone!”
Politico first reported on Harris’ border visit.
Correction: Abbott’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.
