WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Kamala Harris will not be on the ground at the southwest border anytime soon, as she leads efforts to deal with the increase in migrants trying to enter the country.
Harris has no plans to visit the US-Mexico border region “in the near future,” spokeswoman Symone Sanders said on Friday.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday asked the vice president to lead diplomatic efforts to address the increase in the number of migrants, many of whom come from the three countries in the North Triangle of Central America. Sanders said Harris will move to the border at some point, but emphasized the diplomatic nature of the vice president’s role.
“The vice president is not crossing the border,” Sanders told reporters on a flight to Connecticut, where Harris was promoting the government’s COVID-19 aid package.
Harris received an extensive briefing on the North Triangle and Latin America and will soon begin the diplomatic part of his mission. “You can expect her to speak with leaders in the region in the near future,” said Sanders.
The Biden government is supporting a proposal to provide $ 7 billion in assistance to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. He believes that such support can resolve the poverty and violence that drives people to flee their homeland to the United States.
US authorities arrested more than 100,000 people while trying to cross the border in February, the largest since spring 2019. The Biden government is rejecting most people because of a public health order issued at the beginning of the COVID- outbreak. 19, but is allowing children and adolescents and some families to stay, at least temporarily, in the country.
The increase has undermined the capacity of the Border Patrol and the Department of Health and Human Services, which keep minors in shelters until they can be placed with relatives or sponsors in the United States while authorities determine whether they have a legal right to remain. in the country, either through asylum or for any other reason.
It also became a political headache for Biden. Republicans blamed the new government for the increase in migrants, saying the president encouraged people to stop building the border wall project, end the asylum restrictions imposed by former President Donald Trump and support legislation that would allow millions of people who are already in the country to eventually become US citizens.
Senator Ted Cruz led a delegation of lawmakers to the border area on Friday. He tweeted photos of dozens of minors, wrapped in space blankets like aluminum foil, lying on the floor of crowded Border Patrol facilities. “This is a humanitarian and public health crisis,” said the Texas Republican.
Biden, at a news conference on Thursday, promised to step up efforts to get teenagers and children out of the tight Border Patrol facilities and get them to HHS shelters more quickly, but the overall situation does not appear to be improving.
A senior Border Patrol official told reporters on Friday that meetings with migrants along the southwestern border averaged about 5,000 people a day during the month of March, which would represent an increase of around 50% in compared to February if these figures were maintained throughout the month.
Of the total, about 450-500 per day are unaccompanied minors, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary figures.
It is not uncommon to see increases in migrants crossing the border at this time of year and the Border Patrol has faced similar situations in the past, the official said. But the sheer number of teenagers and children and the space constraints resulting from the pandemic have made this year especially difficult.