Cornyn: VP Harris’ border trip ‘100 days late and a thousand miles short’

Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed Vice President Harris’ upcoming trip to the U.S.-Mexico border and her decision to visit El Paso instead of the epicenter of the border crisis in the RGV sector, about a thousand miles away. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“In the absence of any action from the Administration - in fact, any acknowledgement of the crisis at all - the humanitarian crisis has gotten nothing but worse.”

“She will be more than a thousand miles away, down the border from the Border Patrol sector experiencing the worst of this crisis.”

“Since October, the Rio Grande Valley Sector has encountered nearly three times as many unaccompanied children as the El Paso Sector and more than seven times more family units. The situation along the entirety of the U.S. border is challenging, to be sure, and El Paso has suffered during the crisis too, no doubt.”

“Law enforcement, nongovernmental organizations, and community leaders in every border sector are struggling to manage the massive surge of migrants. When asked why she hadn’t visited the border yet, 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.”

“She is nearly 100 days late and a thousand miles short. By ignoring the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest Border Patrol sector along the U.S. Texas-Mexico border, the Vice President is shifting the focus away from the most serious problems of the crisis.”