Kamala Harris hasn’t visited border since being named migration point person

President Joe Biden named Harris as the administration’s point person regarding migration on March 24, with her focusing on long-term efforts in Central America.

“I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this,” Biden said at the time.

“When she speaks, she speaks for me. She doesn’t have to check with me,” he said.

Two weeks later, the administration is coming under increasing scrutiny for the lack of visits to the border, coupled with the vice president avoiding holding a news conference on the matter.

“It would have been incredibly easy for Harris to add a stop on her trip to show her support and to console, comfort and lead on the ground. She has her own plane,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote in an op-ed after Harris’s California trip. “The flight time from LA to San Diego is about 30 minutes.”

However, her other trips have been lauded by locals, including her visit to a bakery on Tuesday in Chicago, where she picked up a slice of German chocolate cake.

“She could have gone to a million other places, but she came here, and I’m grateful for that,” one Brown Sugar Bakery worker said of the visit.

“I’m freakin’ out still,” the bakery’s founder, Stephanie Hart, said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on a question about Harris’s visit to Chicago and if she was still focusing on the border during a Wednesday press conference.

“She hasn’t visited the border or Central America or spoken with leaders of El Salvador or Honduras,” New York Post correspondent Steven Nelson told Psaki. “She traveled this week, took time to visit a bakery in Chicago. I’m wondering, is she still working on this [border issue], and can you address the perception that she’s kind of quietly backing off?”

“There’s a whole lot packed in there,” Psaki replied. “The vice president was visiting Chicago actually to talk COVID and the importance of communities getting the vaccine when it’s available and accessible to them.”

“And so while she was there, like many Americans, she got a snack,” she added. “I think she’s allowed to do that.”

Harris was recently invited to the border by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who said he would make himself “available any day of your choosing.”

“Recently, you stated, ‘You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.’ With that in mind, I formally invite you to join me for a tour of the southwest border in Arizona later this month,” Brnovich wrote in a letter to Harris on Friday.

“Every day, while the cartels are making millions of dollars, migrants are being abused physically and financially. Many families cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars to send their children illegally to America, so they become indebted to the cartels and are forced into years of indentured servitude or trafficking until their debts are paid off,” he explained. “We must do everything we can to put a stop to this.”

The vice president was asked last month if she had plans to visit the border in a video that garnered a torrent of GOP criticism.

“Not today,” Harris responded before laughing. “But I have before, and I’m sure I will again.”