Former President Donald Trump has said that Vice President Kamala Harris is only now visiting the US-Mexico border because he was about to get there ahead of her.
In a statement emailed from his Save America organization, Trump boasted that Harris would never have visited the border if he and other Republicans had not planned a similar trip.
Fmr. Pres. Trump responds to VP Harris’ border trip announcement: pic.twitter.com/jZT6PUa7YR
— Jennifer Franco (@jennfranconews) June 23, 2021
“After months of ignoring the crisis at the Southern Border, it is great that we got Kamala Harris to finally go and see the tremendous destruction and death they’ve created — a direct result of Biden ending my very tough but fair Border policies,” the former president crowed.
“Harris and Biden were given the strongest Border in American history,” he continued. “And now, it is by far the worst in American history.”
“If Governor Abbott and I weren’t going there next week, she would have never gone!” he said.
Trump’s call-out of Texas governor Greg Abbott references his planned trip to review Abbott’s plan to build his border barrier, allowing Texas law enforcement officials to assist Customs and Border Protection with immigration interdiction. Abbott announced last week that he plans to put up “barriers” that are Texas government property, allowing the state to bypass restrictions preventing Texas officials from intercepting illegal immigrants. If migrants scale Texas’ border barriers, they can then be arrested for tampering with state property.
Harris, who was tasked with overseeing immigration at the southern US border by President Joe Biden in March, has been heavily criticized by Republicans for not making the trip sooner.
Notably, she told NBC News’ Lester Holt earlier this month that she hadn’t visited the US-Mexico border because she was in charge of dealing with the “root causes” of Central American migration to the US, and noted that she had not “been to Europe” either. She also told migrants at a trip to Guatemala earlier this month: “Do not come.”
Republican lawmakers have been pressuring the Biden administration to address the rise in people trying to cross the border. Since he became president, record numbers of migrants have tried to enter the US via Mexico.
More than 50 House Republicans wrote to Biden last week, asking him to remove Harris as leader of the effort to address the border “crisis” due to her “inaction.”
Abbott, a Republican, has said that Texas would continue Trump’s work and spend at least $250 million to build a wall along the Mexico border.
Although Trump regularly attacks the Biden administration using his Save America email list — statements which are often posted to social media sites that have banned the former president, amplifying his message — mainstream media outlets do appear to agree that Harris’s decision to finally pay a visit to the United States’ southern border, three months after being placed in charge of the Biden administration’s border crisis, was motivated by Trump’s decision to travel there himself.
President Joe Biden, as The Daily Wire has previously noted, rolled back several Trump-era immigration restrictions, including the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy — a move that many Republicans have suggested contributed to the sharp rise in apprehensions on the southern border.
Sources: Daily Wire, Yahoo News
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