Vice President Kamala Harris compared her decision not to visit the southern U.S. border to not yet visiting Europe, arguing her task to stem migration to the southern U.S. border is about addressing root causes of the immigration surge.
“We’re going to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris told NBC News’s Lester Holt in an interview from Guatemala City when asked whether she planned to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. (She was referring to other Biden administration officials who have been there.)
It was the second time in the brief five-minute clip from the interview, to air Tuesday evening in full, that circulated widely in the morning in which Holt asked Harris about the issue. He probed the vice president earlier, asking: “Why not visit the border? Why not see what Americans are seeing in this crisis?”
Harris appeared to grow frustrated.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” she retorted. “I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”
Harris had acknowledged the need for a response amid a surge in the number of people attempting to cross the border illegally but said the scope of her focus was on the drivers of the influx of migrants.
“We have to deal with what’s happening on the border. There’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point, but we have to understand that there’s a reason people are arriving at our border,” Harris said.
She continued: “I care about what’s happening at the border.”
Harris’s effort to define her diplomatic mission to stem migration to the southern U.S. border narrowly has frustrated lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, who argue that the crisis is in the United States, where border states are dealing a continued spike in apprehensions.
Speaking to reporters in Guatemala City’s Palacio Nacional de la Cultura on Monday, Harris struck a blunter tone, stating that the border was closed and reiterating a position voiced by President Joe Biden earlier this year, telling people: “Do not to come.”
Still, despite Biden’s similar pronouncement earlier this year, numbers have ticked up drastically.
The total number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally this fiscal year has reached the highest total since 2006, according to preliminary figures viewed by Axios, with months still to go.
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Harris spent Monday in Guatemala, where she announced new steps targeting the root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle region, including efforts to stop human trafficking and address corruption.
She meets on Tuesday with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico on the second and final leg of her first foreign trip.
