From ‘Strongest’ to ‘Worst in US History’: Trump Reacts to Harris’s Plans to Visit Southern Border

Vice President Kamala Harris has taken flak over her long-time refusal to visit to the US-Mexican border to get a sense of the magnitude of the ongoing immigration crisis. On Wednesday, US media reported that Harris would visit the southern frontier before the end of this week.

Former President Donald Trump has taken a shot at President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris amid reports that the vice president will finally pay a visit the US border with Mexico, months after being appointed to head the White House’s response to the problem.

“After months of ignoring the crisis at the Southern Border, it is great that we got Kamal Harris to finally go and see the tremendous destruction and death that they’ve created –a direct result of Biden ending my very tough but fair Border policies,” Trump wrote in statement Wednesday.

“Harris and Biden were given the strongest Border in American history. And now, it is by far the worst in American history. If Governor [Greg] Abbott [of Texas] and I weren’t going there next week, she would have never gone!” Trump claimed.

The former president’s comments come in the wake of a report by Politico that Harris would be traveling to El Paso, Texas later this week to observe the border situation. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is reportedly set to accompany the vice president on her trip. Harris’s aides have declined to comment on the veracity of Politico’s reporting.

Abbott invited Trump to join him on an official visit to the “decimated” Southern border last week, with the trip scheduled to take place 30 June. Other Republican officials are expected to join Abbott and Trump for the high profile visit, with about a dozen members of the Republican Study Committee planning to take part.

“President Trump spent four years fixing the border. But the Biden administration broke it again, and we are now experiencing the worst border crisis in our history. That’s why the RSC has made carrying on the Trump legacy on immigration our top priority this Congress and why we are heading to the border with President Trump to explain how we can end this national embarrassment,” RSC chairman Rep Jim Banks of Indiana said in a statement Wednesday.

Trump and company’s trip later this month won’t be the first for Republicans. In March, Senate GOP lawmakers paid a trip to the border, speaking to officials and filming footage of difficult and inhumane conditions at detention facilities among would-be migrants caught by border patrol.

Governor Abbott has flaunted the Biden administration’s federal border guidelines, recently announcing that Texas would be building its own border wall to compensate for Washington’s decision to scrap the Trump-era barrier earlier this year.

US Customs and Border Protection has reported a 249 percent surge in attempts to enter the US illegally since late last year, with the vast majority of the attempts made after Biden stepped into office in January. CBP has also reported a 900 percent increase in arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal records.

The crisis at the border began to take shape almost immediately after Biden took office and began revoking Trump’s hardline immigration policies. In a flurry of executive orders in January, Biden halted construction of the Trump border wall, promised to end “harsh and extreme immigration enforcement,” vowed to “restore and expand” the asylum system, and hinted at a “path to citizenship” for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the US. Earlier this month, President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala suggested that Biden’s perceived welcoming message to migrants was largely responsible for the current crisis.