When Vice President Kamala Harris lands in the border town of El Paso, Texas, on Friday, her visit will cap months of pressure to confront the migration issue she’s been tasked with solving.
But the trip is unlikely to silence political opponents or even allies, who want her to see the problem up close. They say the best view is from South Texas — not Washington, El Paso, or Central America, where Harris ventured earlier this month to address “root causes.”
Towns along the southern border have borne the brunt of a record number of attempted crossings. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, more than 180,000 migrants were apprehended in May, a 20-year high. El Paso, where Harris will appear alongside Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday, is hundreds of miles from the border regions where the crisis is the worst.
“I’m glad that she’s going down to the border,” Texas Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar told the Washington Examiner ahead of the visit, adding he hoped the vice president will accept his invitation to his South Texas district.
The issue is most acute in southeastern Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, where Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than double the number of people in El Paso, according to agency data.
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“Politically, it’s safer to go [to El Paso], but if you want to get a real idea of what’s happening at the border, you’ve got to go where the hot spot is, and that is the lower Rio Grande,” said Cuellar, who has invited Harris to his district numerous times, including in a letter last week.
He continued: “I hope that she’ll go down 800-900 miles down the border sometime in the future, to the lower Rio Grande Valley. That’s where the Donna Border Patrol facilities are, the [Health and Human Services] facilities are for kids, that’s where they’re doing prosecutorial discretion releases. That’s where the majority of the numbers are.”
Cuellar, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said constituents and border agents from his district reached out to him following the announcement.
“I got several texts, and one phone call also, from people in my district, ‘Why is she going over there? She should be coming here. She should ought to be here,’” Cuellar said. “Even Border Patrol yesterday, people that I know, said, ‘Why not down to the Valley?’ And I don’t know how to answer them. I don’t know the rationale why.”
Still, he said, “I am grateful that she is now going to the border.”
Calls for Harris to make a stop along the U.S.-Mexico border hit a crescendo this month as she traveled to Mexico and Guatemala to discuss ways to halt the flow of migration from the region.
Harris threw cold water on the prospect during a press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei when she unveiled measures to target corruption and smuggling.
Telling reporters she would continue her work to address the root causes of migration from the region “as opposed to grand gestures,” Harris dismissed “Republicans’ political attacks or criticism or even concerns” about the lack of a trip.
Harris waved off the idea again during a widely shared interview with NBC, receiving pushback from people who argued the impact at home is also worthy of attention.
Asked why she had yet to visit border states amid the crisis, Harris appeared frustrated.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” she said. “I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”
The vice president said later she had been to the border and would go again, a trip the White House soon suggested could be on the horizon.
This week, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told McClatchy, “I think she should go to the border to get that off her back.”
Officials and people close to Harris said the timing is not the result of outside pressures, such as the visit planned by former President Donald Trump next week.
“This is just the next phase in coordination with other parts of the administration,” second gentleman Doug Emhoff told NBC in an interview this week. “Kamala Harris is not driven by any political issues or political pressure.”
And while political opponents have pressed Harris to make the visit, she may find it does little to allay critics of the administration’s broader policies.
“Whether she goes to the border or not is kind of irrelevant. She can go to the border, but unless they change their policies, the border surge isn’t going away,” said Chris Chmielenski, deputy director at NumbersUSA, a group supporting stricter immigration enforcement.
A new poll this month shows the administration is weighed down by concerns over its handling of immigration. Biden has a 45% approval rating on the issue, a nearly 10-point drop from his overall job approval rating at 54%, according to a June 3 survey by IPSOS-Spectrum.
Next Wednesday, Trump will join the state’s Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and a dozen House Republican Study Committee members in Edinburg, South Texas, capping the visit with a Fox News town hall.
In October 2020, Harris visited Edinburg with Cuellar, but Friday will mark her first visit to the border since taking office.
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Abbott has blamed the White House for the increase in people attempting to reach the United States, stating the Biden administration’s policies have made it possible for “dangerous gangs and cartels, human traffickers, and deadly drugs like fentanyl to pour into our communities.”
