The White House suggested Vice President Kamala Harris may take a surprise trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, a not-yet-scheduled visit that Harris on Monday characterized as a “grand gesture” and dismissed again in a television interview that brought Republican outrage, even though it has yet to air.
“I think that, at some point, she may go to the border, we’ll see. …. Obviously, she’s made a couple of announcements already, probably more to come before she comes back to the United States,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday in response to questions about whether Harris would travel to the border.
Asked again, Psaki referenced the possibility a second time.
Harris, who is in Mexico to discuss efforts to stem migration from the Northern Triangle region to the southern U.S. border, has faced persistent questions about she will make a trip there.
The vice president has traveled to Guatemala and Mexico to discuss plans to stem migration from Mexico and Central America to the southern U.S. border.
She delivered a blunt message to people considering the journey on Monday, telling them, “Do not come.”
“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border. Do not come. Do not come,” the vice president said during a press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei. “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.”
In an interview taped Monday to air in full Tuesday evening, the vice president seemed to suggest a visit could be on the horizon, telling NBC News’s Lester Holt in a clip released online: “We’re going to the border. We’ve been to the border.”
Holt pressed Harris several times on the issue, asking her, “Why not visit the border? Why not see what Americans are seeing in this crisis?”
Harris appeared to grow frustrated during the interview, retorting when pressed that she hadn’t “been to Europe” either.
The vice president and White House officials have said repeatedly that her task to stem migration to the southern U.S. border is about root causes, not the pressing domestic issue on the border.
Migrants have been apprehended in record numbers, and Harris has been criticized for failing to take stock of the issue at home.
Asked about this on Monday, the vice president said that her work was focused on “tangible steps” to address the causes of migration.
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“I will be focused on that kind of work as opposed to grand gestures,” she said.
