Vice President Kamala Harris will make her first trip to the US-Mexico border since assuming office, despite criticism from both parties for failing to go sooner while directing the Biden administration’s response to a sharp rise in migration.
Harris will travel to El Paso, Texas, on Friday with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Harris spokeswoman Symone Sanders said.
Harris, who visited the U.S.-Mexico border many times as a senator and attorney general from California, was assailed by Republicans when she visited Mexico and Guatemala this month. She said she would go to the border eventually.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants, many fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, have attempted to cross into the United States in recent months, prompting scathing criticism from Republicans that President Joe Biden’s more humane approach to immigration was provoking rather than preventing a crisis.
Harris senior advisor Symone Sanders said Wednesday that the vice president will visit the border city of El Paso, Texas.
