GOP Whip John Thune slammed the Biden administration for refusing to return to Trump-era policies ‘that were working.’
As Vice President Kamala Harris visits Mexico and Guatemala this week to address the “root causes” of migration, Senate GOP Whip John Thune and other Republican lawmakers are urging the Democrat to narrow the scope of her mission to address longstanding immigration enforcement issues closer to home.
Thune said in a statement to National Review that while “we should all hope for a quick end to the crisis at the border,” he hasn’t seen a “willingness from this administration to revert back to policies that were working.”
“I hope the vice president’s trip lets her take an honest look at the open-border signals she and President Biden have been sending to the cartels and traffickers, but I would implore her and the president to also visit the border to see firsthand the crisis their policies have created,” he said.
President Biden lifted the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated. Since that rollback, roughly 40 percent of asylum-seekers are ultimately allowed to enter the country and many of them will never appear for their designated court dates, according to historical trends seen in CPB data.
Republican critics and border patrol agents have argued that Biden administration’s lifting of Trump-era enforcement policies provided sent a signal to would-be migrants and their traffickers that the border was open, causing a drastic spike in attempted illegal entries. (More than 170,000 migrants were apprehended at the border in May, setting a 20-year record.)
Harris moved to preempt that line of criticism during her Monday joint press conference with Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei, telling prospective migrants bluntly: “Do not come.”
“We will discourage illegal migration,” she commented. “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.”
“There are legal methods by which migration can and should occur,” Harris added.
Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) similarly criticized Harris on the Senate floor on Monday for visiting Guatemala instead of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The only problem is she’s not visiting the border,” Cornyn said. She’s not even in her home state of California, which has a border with Mexico. She’s in Guatemala.”
“Imagine calling 911 when your home is on fire and watching as they hose down your neighbor’s house instead,” he added. “That’s what it feels like.”
Yet Harris, who will meet with the Mexican president Tuesday, insisted during an interview with NBC News that her focus on conditions thousands of miles south of the border is ultimately in America’s interest, rejecting Republican claims that she should focus on enforcement solutions at the border that could yield tangible results more quickly.
The focus on root causes of migration is about “understanding if nothing else that the return on our investment is the same return on your investment that if you have a neighbor on your block where you grew up who’s having a hard time, it’s in the best interest not only of your neighbor but of yourself to help them out,” she said.
Cornyn said that while Harris’ “list of legislative accomplishments and her experience solving complex policy problems is not particularly deep” that he would be happy to meet with Harris and Biden to discuss the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act that he introduced with Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) in April.
Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) took a shot at Harris in a tweet on Monday: “If Kamala Harris really wanted to get to the root cause of the #BidenBorderCrisis, she’d examine Biden’s promise of free health care for illegal aliens.”
For her part, Harris on Tuesday deflected questions about why she has not yet visited the southern border.
NBC’s Lester Holt asked Harris whether she has plans to visit the border, having gone 76 days without a trip there since being named border czar.
“I – at some point – you know – we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris said. “So this whole – this whole – this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”
Holt pushed back, noting Harris had not been to the border herself while in office.
“I – and I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t – I don’t understand the point that you’re making,” Harris said, adding “I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”
“Listen, I care about what’s happening at the border,” Harris said, adding that she is “in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration.”
“There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what’s happening at the border, we better care about the root causes and address them,” she said. “And so that’s what I’m doing.”
Holt also raised criticisms leveled by Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) and other border Democrats over Harris’s absence at the border.
“We don’t just go visit the border, we live at the border. We talk to the NGOs there, we talk to the mayors, the county judges, to the border patrol, to the men and women in blue, green, and other folks, ICE agents also. We understand this very well,” Cuellar told National Review in April. “I still will encourage them to do more, to reach out to the folks on the border communities and keep talking to them, to make sure that they get a balanced view of what’s happening there at the border itself.”
However, CNN reported last week that Harris’ team is trying to distance her from the U.S.-Mexico border crisis after President Biden appointed the vice president to lead the administration’s efforts there in March.
Harris and the White House have previously excused the vice president’s absence at the White House as being due to “COVID issues” or the risk of disruption of a vice-presidential visit.