Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said he is wondering why Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting El Paso, Texas, for her first trip to the southern border, as it is not the “epicenter of the crisis.”
“I don’t know why they chose El Paso. It’s not the epicenter of the crisis,” he said during Wednesday’s broadcast of Fox News’s Special Report.
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The city is also 1,000 miles from the Rio Grande Valley sector, where Republicans say the vast majority of border crossings are occurring. Instead, the Florida senator suggested Harris visit McAllen, which is nearly 800 miles away from El Paso.
“It’s closer to McAllen and areas of that nature. But I will say that irrespective, I think what they’re going to see is what they created,” he said.
Rubio then contrasted the Biden administration’s immigration stance to the Trump administration’s approach.
“Now, migratory pressure has always been there, and I don’t care what anybody tells you, I don’t care what rhetoric you hear, I know people who have relatives in Central America, and the message they got in November of last year and in January when Joe Biden was sworn in was, ‘There’s a new administration, they’re going to do everything on immigration the opposite of Trump,’” the senator said.
He continued: “There will be no wall. Some of the first actions they took were on immigration in terms of deferring the deportation of people who may have been in jail, also, the new asylum processes, getting rid of ‘stay in Mexico’ policies. All of this sends a message, and that is, ‘Things have changed, it’s going to be easier to get in,’ and the trafficking networks took advantage of it.”
Rubio was not alone in criticizing Harris’s strategic border visit.
“She’s going to the wrong part of the border,” former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Wednesday.
“Someone needs a map,” Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, echoed on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon.
“The reality of the situation is we are nearing a breaking point, and the vice president and president could see that if they are only willing to join me and others who would be more than happy to host them by visiting the Rio Grande Valley,” he added.
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Harris’s announced trip comes after criticism from Republicans and Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who have repeatedly urged her to visit the border since Biden chose her to resolve the crisis.
The vice president will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
