Harris Skips Meeting With Mexican Officials to Go Politicking in New Jersey
Joe Biden named Vice President Kamala Harris last March as his point person in the administration to address “challenges” at the southern border and to work with other Central American nations to address the “root causes” of the problem of illegal immigration.
That was the official line, anyway. Actually, Biden put Harris out in front of border security because whoever was going to lead the effort to halt the flow of refugees at the border was going to fail. Biden didn’t want anything to do with the matter.
As it turns out, neither does Harris. She didn’t even visit the border until June and that was only after the mainstream media began to wonder why the administration’s point person on the border crisis wasn’t visiting, like, you know…the border. She checked that box off her to-do list and went on with her other duties as vice president.
So Biden placed Harris in an untenable political situation and Harris is refusing to fall on her sword for her boss by not embracing the role of “border czar.”
Almost certainly, this will lead to more uncomfortable questions, such as why Harris was in New Jersey kissing babies when other administration officials were in Mexico meeting with government officials on security matters.
Attending Friday’s high-level talks in Mexico’s capital were Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado who now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, also attended.
It doesn’t get more “high-level” than that. This wasn’t a meeting of some undersecretaries or assistant secretaries. These people were the heavy hitters in the Biden administration when it comes to securing our nation’s border.
So where was Vice President Harris?
Harris, meanwhile, traveled to the Garden State, visiting a daycare center at Montclair State University in Little Falls and a vaccination site at Essex County Community College in Newark to promote the Biden administration’s agenda.
The vice president last visited the border in June, spending several hours in El Paso, Texas, while on her way to her home in California. It’s the only time she’s been to the border since taking office.
Do you get the distinct feeling that Vice President Harris doesn’t want anything to do with the border, despite her boss telling her to ramrod the effort to control the human wave of refugees and illegals?
“Vice President Harris is ignoring the real problem areas along our southern border that are not protected by the border wall and are being overrun by the federal government’s ill-thought-out, open border policies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement ahead of her late June trip.
Harris and her spokespeople have countered that she has focused on behind-the-scenes discussions with Latin American leaders regarding the “root causes” of migration, such as poverty and political corruption in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
If your house is burning down, you don’t sit down at the kitchen table and talk to your wife about how best to prevent fire from destroying your home.
Biden’s political gambit in fobbing off responsibility for the border crisis to Harris isn’t working. It worked when Biden was vice president and was given thankless tasks like organizing the “Big Skedaddle” out of Iraq. Biden was grateful to do anything.
But clearly, Harris has her own agenda and it doesn’t include taking the responsibility for the political tar baby at the border. As Biden’s position as president erodes and the murmurs of a health issue grow, Harris wants to be ready to answer the call no matter when it comes.
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