Vice President Kamala Harris has not held a press conference in the eight days since being assigned to lead the White House’s effort to address the crisis at the southern border.
Harris has fielded some questions from the media since President Joe Biden’s announcement that she would be leading the effort last week, but she has yet to hold a press conference. This comes amid a significant increase in media attention to immigration after pictures of migrants crammed into overcrowded detention facilities began to surface.
Biden announced Harris’s main focus on the issue is working with other countries to return illegal migrants to their home nations after they make contact with U.S. officials.
“So, this new surge we’re dealing with now started with the last administration, but it’s our responsibility to deal with it humanely and to — and to stop what’s happening,” Biden said last week. “And so, this increase has been consequential, but the vice president has agreed, among the multiple other things that I have her leading, and I appreciate it, agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept … the returnees and enhance migration enforcement at their borders.”
The administration later clarified that Harris was tasked with confronting the “root causes” of the crisis, “not the border” specifically.
The lack of a press conference also comes after Biden broke a record by not holding a press conference for the first time until his 65th day in office.
Republicans have relentlessly criticized Biden’s moves to overturn much of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies shortly after he took office, with that criticism only intensifying as a surge of migrants have overwhelmed authorities at the border.
A delegation of 19 senators led by Sen. Ted Cruz took a trip to the border last week, releasing photos of packed facilities made even more troublesome by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Republicans have also accused the administration of not being transparent with the public, slamming a White House policy denying media access to detention facilities.
“This past Thursday and Friday, eighteen of my Senate colleagues and I visited the border and witnessed firsthand the staggering public health and humanitarian crisis caused by your policies,” Cruz wrote in the letter to Biden. “We understand the heartbreaking tragedy unfolding at the border because we were there. We saw it. But the American people are unable to see it because you remain intent on keeping the media from shining a light on your administration’s failures.”
