After meeting detained migrant children on the US-Mexico border, Vice President Kamala Harris declared Friday that there’s been “extreme progress” made to quell the ongoing crisis — despite the fact that illegal crossings continue to smash records.
Harris gave the surprisingly upbeat take during her first trip to the border in her 94 days as President Biden’s migration crisis czar.
“In five months we’ve made progress, but there’s still much more work to be done, but we’ve made progress on family reunification… And we’ve also made progress in addressing the root causes,” Harris claimed during a meeting with nonprofit leaders in El Paso, Texas.
Later, as she departed El Paso for a weekend trip to her home state California, Harris upgraded her assessment, telling reporters, “we have seen extreme progress over these last few months.”
But statistics indicate otherwise as critics attribute the surge to Biden’s policies. The number of US-Mexico border detentions hit a 21-year monthly high of more than 180,000 in May. Nearly 179,000 people were detained in April.
Harris was on the ground in Texas for less than 5 hours and got off on a testy start when she sniped at a reporter, “It’s not my first trip. I’ve been to the border many times.”
Before touting the “progress,” Harris met privately with detained migrant children who were reportedly glad to see her — a discordant picture amid recent reports of a crying 5-year-old boy abandoned by smugglers near El Paso and smugglers infamously dropping 3- and 5-year-old girls over tall fencing nearby.
Other parts of the border are far worse, leaders of the Border Patrol’s labor union said, slamming Harris for picking El Paso.
Although reporters weren’t allowed to witness the VP’s meeting with children, Harris’ office released flattering quotes from her meeting with the five girls aged 9-16, who arrived to the border from Central America without their parents.
The children asked Harris “how did you get so far?” and told her “you’re an example to us,” according to quotes circulated by the VP’s press officers.
Harris encouraged the children to read, learn math and work hard. Her paraphrased words of advice included to “make good choices and make good friends that lift you up” and “never listen to anyone who says you can’t do something.”
The children told Harris that when they grow up they want to be a veterinarian, a police officer, a civil engineer and a doctor, according to her office.
Harris told reporters, who asked about the encounter: “I met with the children, with the young girls. And you know, it was interesting, they have obviously fled great harm. They’re there without their parents. They are also full of hope. They were asking me questions: ‘How do you become the first woman vice president?'”
She said meeting with the kids “reminds me of the fact that this issue cannot be reduced to a political issue — we’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we’re talking about suffering.”
Harris continued, “Our approach has to be thoughtful and effective and we can take all of these perspectives into account and have meaningful good public policy if we just stop the rhetoric and the finger pointing and do what we need to do, including… agreeing that we need immigration reform in our country and that Congress must act.”
Biden has called for legislation to legalize almost all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US and campaigned on welcoming asylum seekers from Central America. In March, House Democrats and a minority of Republicans voted to pass bills to legalize about half of the illegal immigrants in the US.
Biden also ended the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that required most asylum seekers from Central America to await a US verdict on their claims of persecution while staying in Mexico. And he canceled construction of the US-Mexico border wall.
Critics accuse Biden of creating new “pull” factors that are luring the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to the country — a stance notably taken by Guatemala’s president and Mexico’s president.
Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott was dismissed from his job Wednesday ahead of Harris’ visit — which was hastily announced ahead of former President Donald Trump’s trip to the border next week. Trump is expected to slam Biden and Harris.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said in a Fox News interview Friday that Harris should have gone to a harder-hit area of the border than El Paso.
“You don’t go to El Paso to see what is actually going on at the border,” Judd said.
Judd said that the El Paso sector is relatively well-secured and that Harris should have visited McAllen, Texas, to see where the most migrant apprehensions are happening or Tucson, Ariz., to see where the most migrants are successfully evading authorities.
The vice president of the Border Patrol’s union, Art Del Cueto, called Harris’ choice of El Paso a “slap in the face.”
“If she really wanted to see what was going on, she would go to the hot zones,” Del Cueto told Fox.
