Vice President Kamala Harris said she was “frustrated” with the situation on the southern border of the United States, as the number of families of migrants and unaccompanied minors encountered by border agents increases.
Harris said the government did not have enough time to fix the situation in an interview with “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday.
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“Well, we do what we need to do to really rebuild the systems that handle the processing of these cases, and that’s taking some time. And look, we’ve been in office for less than 100 days. take some time, and are we frustrated? Are you frustrated? Yes, we are, “said Harris.
Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, speaks while President of the United States, Joe Biden, observes during an audience session with the leaders of the Asian American community and the Pacific Islands of Georgia at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia , on March 19, 2021. (Photo by ERIC BARADAT / AFP via Getty Images)
She blamed the Trump administration for the number of children in custody of the Border Patrol, despite reports that the Biden administration ignored the warning signs, including briefings by senior Customs and Border Protection officials, about an impending crisis.
“There was a system in place before, before the last government, to allow us to prosecute these children in their country of origin. This has been dismantled. We have to rebuild it,” said Harris.
Harris did not call the situation on the border a crisis, but she called it a “big problem”.
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“It’s a big problem. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t. It’s a big problem. Are we seeing overcrowding on the border in particular with these children? Yes. These children should be in the custody of HHS, Health and Human Services, rather than the Border Patrol? Yes. Should we process these cases faster? Yes. This, however, will not be resolved overnight. “
She said that she and President Biden would visit the border “at some point”.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that the United States is on track to find more migrants than it has in the past 20 years in defending the government’s approach to expanding the border.
“The situation on the southwestern border is difficult,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “We are working 24 hours a day to manage it and will continue to do so. This is our job. We are progressing and executing our plan. It will take time and we will not falter in our commitment to succeed. “
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He spoke days after Customs and Border Protection announced that he had met more than 100,000 migrants at the border in February, while the number of migrant children in custody has also increased dramatically.
Adam Shaw of Fox News contributed to this report.