Criticism Mounts For Kamala Harris Planning Southern Border Visit Away From the ‘Epicenter of the Crisis’

While it is unclear right now where former President Donald Trump plans to visit the southern border with Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, it seems unlikely that he will visit at El Paso, Texas, where Vice President Kamala Harris intends to go on Friday.

Criticism is mounting from both sides of the aisle on where she has chosen to visit, as it is far away from what U.S. Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) described last night on Fox News as the “Epicenter of the crisis.”

Rubio explained that Harris instead should visit McAllen, which is nearly 800 miles away from El Paso and described the surge as being “Closer to McAllen and areas of that nature.”

“I will say that irrespective, I think what they’re going to see is what they created,” Rubio said, however.

Customs and Border Protection data shows that the Rio Grande Valley has seen the most illegal immigration of the state’s nine border regions and nearly 2 1/2 times as many migrant encounters as the El Paso region with Border Patrol agents from October through May apprehending 271,927 migrants in the Rio Grande Valley, compared to 113,824 in El Paso.

Podcaster Cari Kelemen tweeted a picture and said, “See El Paso. See El Paso’s completed border wall. This is why Kamala is going to El Paso. Because the border crisis is 1,000 miles away.”

See El Paso.
See El Paso's completed border wall.
This is why Kamala is going to El Paso.
Because the border crisis is 1,000 miles away. pic.twitter.com/NYwDMCIMkw

— Cari Kelemen 2.0 (@CariKelemen) June 23, 2021

Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf joined Rubio in criticizing Harris’ border destination choice yesterday as well as U.S. Sen John Cornyn (R-TX).

Wolf said simply, “She’s going to the wrong part of the border,” according to the Washington Examiner.

On the Senate floor, Cornyn lamented, “The vice president said she wasn’t interested in grand gestures, yet here she is planning a trip in a way that reflects again she doesn’t really fully comprehend the magnitude of the crisis, and where it really exists on steroids, which is the Rio Grande Valley.”

Cornyn added, “It’s not even fair to say she’s a day late and a dollar short. She’s nearly a hundred days late and a thousand miles short.”

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who has been one of the few Democrats criticizing Harris for not visiting the border, told Fox News this morning, “I’m sure her planners told her that if you’re going to go down to the border, go to something that’s safer to go to, that is, politically safer.”