Joe Biden turned to Kamala Harris to address troubles at the southern border.
Harris tapped to stem southern border influx
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem.
Biden made the announcement as he and Harris met at the White House on Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas and other immigration advisers to discuss the increase in migrants, including many unaccompanied minors, arriving at the border in recent weeks.
“When she speaks, she speaks for me,” Biden said, noting that Harris’ past work as California’s attorney general makes her specially equipped to lead the administration’s response.
Biden has faced stiff criticism from Republicans over the increased flow of migrants since he took office in January. The high-profile assignment for Harris, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and is expected to run for the White House again in the future, could be politically fraught.
To that end, Biden teased in his comments that he was saddling her with a “tough job.”
“Needless to say, the work will not be easy,” Harris said about her new assignment. “But it is important work.”
Harris is tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders, administration officials said. More broadly, though, she’s tasked with implementing a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.
Biden made the announcement as a delegation of White House officials and members of Congress was traveling to the southern border on Wednesday to tour a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, where more than 750 migrant teenagers are being held.
The Biden administration has in recent weeks moved to open more than 10,000 new beds across the Southwest in convention centers and former oilfield camps.
It notified Congress on Wednesday that it will open a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person site at the San Diego convention center. HHS is also opening a second site in Carrizo Springs and exploring housing teenagers at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.
But the U.S. is exhausting capacity almost as quickly as it can add it.
The White House was limiting media access on Wednesday’s tour, keeping it to just one TV crew.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is leading a separate delegation of GOP senators to the border later this week, decried what he said was a “crisis” at the border and the lack of press access as a “muzzling” of the media by the Democratic administration.
“Joe Biden doesn’t want you to see,” Cruz told reporters at the Capitol.