The White House has just confirmed Vice President Kamala Harris has hastily arranged to visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, rushing south with Homeland Security Secretary
Alejandro Mayorkas to get there before a planned visit by former President Donald Trump and Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
Harris has come under heavy criticism from Republicans and even some Democrats for the way she has handled the role of Border Czar since being appointed to it 91 days ago.
The White House has defended Harris for not visiting the border, saying that her role was to improve diplomacy and conditions inside Northern Triangle countries from which illegal aliens are fleeing, but so far there has been no let-up in the surge north, because the illegal migrants all know they will be admitted to the United States and be allowed to stay now that Joe Biden is President.
So, it is fair to ask what changed from June 8, when Harris blew-off questions from NBC's Lester Holt, saying:
"At some point, you know, we are going to the border," Harris said in the interview. "We've been to the border. So this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border."
Holt responded: "You haven't been to the border."
"I, and I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't -- I don't understand the point that you're making," Harris said with a laugh. She added: "I'm not discounting the importance of the border."
What changed is that former President Donald Trump said HE would visit the border.
The announcement of Harris’ trip came just days after former President Trump announced he would join Governor Abbott for an official visit to what he called “our Nation’s decimated Southern Border” on Wednesday, June 30, 2021.
In a statement disclosing the planned trip, former President Trump said:
The Biden Administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in U.S history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in U.S history. It’s an unmitigated disaster zone.
We went from detain-and-remove to catch-and-release. We went from having border security that was the envy of the world to a lawless border that is now pitied around the world. Biden and Harris have handed control of our border over to cartels, criminals, and coyotes. Drug dealers, MS-13 gang members, human smugglers, sex traffickers, and the criminal elements of the world now have free reign. Hospitals and schools are getting crushed and public health is being sacrificed all in service of a radical left anti-borders agenda. Our brave border agents and courageous ICE officers have been illegally stopped from doing their jobs. Our Nation is now one giant sanctuary city where even dangerous criminals are being cut loose and set free inside the U.S interior on a daily basis.
If this weren’t bad enough, Biden and Harris won’t even tour the scenes of the wreckage they created, or come down and visit with the Border Patrol and ICE heroes risking their lives to defend our Nation at a time when the White House is doing everything it can to make their job totally impossible.
What Biden and Harris have done, and are continuing to do on our border, is a grave and willful dereliction of duty.
My visit will hopefully shine a spotlight on these crimes against our Nation—and show the incredible people of ICE and Border Patrol that they have our unshakeable support.
There was no way that Harris could allow Donald Trump to go to the border before she did, the politics and optics would have been devastating, so she had to calendar the trip.
We look forward to the post-trip news conference, during which Harris and Mayorkas will have to defend the disaster they and Joe Biden have created. We’re guessing that Trump’s miraculous power to make Democrats do and say dumb stuff will be working at max power to tee-up the themes of his June 30 trip with Governor Abbott.
Kamala Harris border visit
illegal immigration
Joe Biden immigration policy
Donald Trump immigration policy
Trump border wall
border crossings surge
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
Gov. Greg Abbott
Border Czar