Kamala Harris heads to the border with Mexico amid criticism from Republicans
US Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked with the thorny issue of illegal immigration by Joe Biden, headed to the border with Mexico on Friday, a long-awaited visit aimed at monitoring the "effects" of the record influx of immigrants, after weeks of criticism from Republicans.
The spring saw record arrests on the southern US border. In May, nearly 180,000 people were arrested after illegally crossing the border, a new record in 15 years.
"The president and I are fully committed to making sure that our immigration system works and is humane, and I really think we're making progress in that direction," Harris said during a visit to El Paso, Texas.
On her first international mission in early June, Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico, saying she wanted to "address the causes" of the influx of thousands of migrants from that region. This time, the vice president wanted to examine "the implications of what we saw in Central America."
"If you want to fix a problem, you can't just deal with the symptoms," she said Friday, responding to Republican criticism for her delay in going to the border.
Harris explained that she chose to come to El Paso in particular because in this city on the Mexican border, the administration of former President Donald Trump unveiled its "child separation policy."
Under Trump, some 4,000 immigrant children have been separated from their families.
But Republicans consider that Biden and his vice president backfired by promising to pursue an immigration policy more "humane" than Trump's.
Members of the party in the House of Representatives on Friday lamented that Harris "never mentioned the need to secure our southern border."
