Vice President Kamala Harris — who has been slammed for not visiting the southern border amid the surge of unaccompanied migrant children arriving in the US — on Sunday said she can’t get to Mexico and Central America “soon enough” to meet with leaders there.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” she said has talked virtually with the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala — Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Alejandro Giammattei — but so far has not met them face-to-face.
“And we have a plan to actually have another meeting coming up soon. We’re working on the plan to get there. We have to deal with COVID issues, but I can’t get there soon enough, in terms of personally getting there,” Harris said.
But the vice president did not say when she would tour the border.
Harris argued that the US must address the root causes of why people flee their countries in the first place, saying we must “give people some sense of hope that if they stay that help is on the way.”
She said she convened a meeting with Biden Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, to discuss how the administration can assist farmers in areas of Mexico and El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that have been hard hit by the back-to-back hurricanes and other natural disasters like global warming.
She said they’re going to hold a virtual trade mission now and then an in-person visit later.
“We’re making progress, but it’s not going to evidence itself overnight. It will not. But it will be worth it, and I will tell you part of my approach to this is we’ve got to institutionalize the work and also internationalize it,” she said.
Harris added that she is working with United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to ask the global body and other allies to lend a hand to stem the tide.
“Because, again, this is about the Western Hemisphere. We are a neighbor in the Western Hemisphere, and it is also about understanding that we have the capacity to actually get in there, if we are consistent,” she said.
Harris then went on to criticize former President Donald Trump’s handling of the border and said the Biden administration has to work on rebuilding diplomatic ties.
“We have to rebuild it, and I’ve made it very clear to our team that this has to be a function of an American priority, and not just a function of whoever happens to be sitting in this chair,” she said.
Harris added that the White House is examining the root causes of the immigraiton crisis sparked by “extreme weather conditions” that adversely affected agriculture in the region.
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