Drop politics to fix immigration, Harris says at U.S.-Mexico border

WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) – Vice President Kamala Harris visited a border patrol facility near the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, urging a focus on children and practical solutions to migration.

The visit – her first since she was named Vice President five months ago – came amid a surge in migrants caught crossing the border, which sparked outrage among Republicans who support former President Donald Trump’s stricter immigration policies.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, tasked Harris with leading his administration’s handling of the broader problem of people fleeing Central American countries to the United States. She visited Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month.

“This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue. We talk about children, we talk about families, we talk about suffering. And our approach has to be thoughtful and effective, ”said Harris at the end of her short trip.

According to preliminary figures reported to Reuters, US authorities have arrested more than 1 million migrants on the US-Mexico border so far in fiscal year 2021. Continue reading

Republicans have criticized Biden for pulling back on Trump-era restrictive immigration policies, even though arrests of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a 20-year high in recent months. You have also criticized Harris for not visiting the border earlier.

Harris was accompanied in El Paso by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senate Justice Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, and Texas Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar, who called the El Paso area the new “Ellis Island,” a nod to the famous area in New York Harbor, which handled millions of immigrants entering the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Immigration, and in particular the arrival of asylum seekers on the US southern border, has been a hot topic for decades. Several attempts to reform US law and provide citizenship routes for millions of illegal immigrants in the country have failed in Congress.

Democrats and activists have urged Biden to further reduce enforcement and ensure humane treatment of migrant children and families who arrive at the border.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will attend a roundtable of faith and community leaders who will help process asylum seekers on June 25, 2021 at the Paso del Norte port of entry in El Paso, Texas, USA. REUTERS / Evelyn Hockstein

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During the trip, Harris also met with supporters calling on her administration to end Trump-era policies that allow U.S. authorities to quickly deport migrants to Mexico or their home countries, according to one participant, Fernando Garcia, the executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso.

Harris, who was visiting the border as a California Senator and Attorney General, was attacked by Republicans while visiting Mexico and Guatemala to curb migration from the region to the United States.

TRUMP VISIT LOOMS Harris’ trip on Friday appeared to have been hastily put together by Trump days before a planned border visit. Continue reading

A White House official said Harris’ schedule was not dictated by Trump’s steps. “I can assure you that we will not be guided by the former president,” said the official.

“I said I was going to the border in March, so this isn’t a new plan,” Harris told reporters after landing in Texas. “Coming to the border … means looking at the effects of what we’ve seen in Central America.”

Republicans criticized Harris for choosing El Paso as the hotspot for increased border crossings rather than the area they point out.

“Although it is certainly positive that she is taking this step, I am disappointed that she is not going to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) – the epicenter of this crisis,” said incumbent Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf under Trump in a statement.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, executive director of immigration and cross-border policies for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank, said many Republicans have embraced Trump’s tough immigration policies as they prepare for the 2022 U.S. Congressional election, thinking they will they will win voters.

“They think they can win seats with it in 2022, so of course they’ll play it up,” she said. “They’ll try to make it a problem.”

Reporting by Nandita Bose and Ted Hesson, editing by Kieran Murray and Raju Gopalakrishnan

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