Republicans are stepping up pressure on Vice President Kamala Harris to deal more aggressively with the immigration surge at the southern border — including a visit to the area.
On Monday, Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, accused her of using COVID-19 as an "excuse" for not seeing the situation first-hand at the southern border.
"She's been jet-setting around this country, going to all the different blue states, talking about this infrastructure plan and everything else. So, no, this isn't COVID, Kamala. And you know it," he said on Fox & Friends.
"You just don't want to visit the southern border because you know what you're going to hear. You're going to hear from the border patrol, Department of Public Safety, immigration, small-town mayors, and everyone that lives along that southern border that you are doing a horrible job. You're in complete denial and you need to fix the southern border. That's what she would hear if she visited it. So she's going to use the excuse like everything else," he charged.
GOP critics for the past two weeks have been attacking Harris’ performance after President Joe Biden tapped her to be his "border czar" to focus on immigration.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, last week chided her for doing little to fulfill her roll as "border czar," and former Speaker of the House New Gingrich on April 12 told Fox News Harris was put in charge of the border because "they knew she wouldn’t do anything."
"If you look at a piece of history, sometimes the obvious is accurate," Gingrich said, the Daily Caller reported. "They wanted Harris to be in charge of the border because they knew she wouldn’t do anything. This is not a mistake, this is why they refuse to call it a crisis."
Harris will take part in a May 7 virtual meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that’ll focus on "the common goals of prosperity, good governance, and addressing the root causes of migration," her office has announced.
But GOP critics have blamed the Biden administration’s liberal approach to immigration and border policy as the spark for a surge that’s that saw more than 172,000 migrants crossing the border in in March alone.
In particular, critics have hit the rollback of the "Remain-in-Mexico" policy that kept migrants south of the border, efforts to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the country, and the Biden administration's decision not to apply public health protections that allow migrants to be expelled quickly to unaccompanied children.
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