Vice President Kamala Harris, tasked as the Biden administration's point person on migration at the southern border, will visit the U.S.-Mexico Border on Friday, a spokesperson announced Wednesday.

What You Need To Know

  • Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the U.S.-Mexico Border on Friday, traveling to El Paso, Texas, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

  • Harris has been tasked as the Biden administration's point person on migration at the southern border

  • White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the trip was a coordinated effort with the Department of Homeland Security as part of the administration's effort to address the root causes of migration

  • Republicans have tried to make Harris the face of the administration’s policies, charging that she and Biden were ignoring the issue because both had yet to visit the border

Harris will visit El Paso, Texas, on Friday, and will be accompanied by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, senior adviser and chief spokesperson Symone Sanders said in a statement.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the trip was a coordinated effort with the Department of Homeland Security as part of the administration's effort to address the root causes of migration.

Psaki said that now is an "appropriate time" for the visit, citing improving conditions at the border.

"If you look to just a couple of months ago, when there were children waiting in Border Patrol facilities for more than 100 hours, and they were certainly overcrowded, now it's less than 30 hours," Psaki said. In April, there were 22,000 kids in HHS facilities. Now, that number is 14,000."

"Is there still more work to do? Absolutely," Psaki continued. "Thats the purview of Secretary Mayorkas, but it is important that every part of the government is coordinated."

The visit comes amid criticsm from Republican lawmakers who have blasted the vice president for not visiting the border. Harris and her team have pushed back on that criticism, saying that she is focused on addressing the root causes of migration. Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month as part of her work to address the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

On her visit to Guatemala and Mexico this month, she urged Central Americans not to try to reach the U.S. border. She tried to give people a sense of hope that would encourage them to stay home.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 180,000 encounters on the Mexican border in May, the most since March 2000. But the numbers were boosted by a pandemic-related ban on seeking asylum, which encouraged repeated attempts to cross the border because getting caught carried no legal consequences.

The news was first reported by Politico; the outlet also reported that former President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and a group of about a dozen House Republicans will visit the U.S.-Mexico border next week.

Minutes after the vice president's trip was announced, the former president issued a statement saying "after months of ignoring the crisis at the Southern Border, it is great that we got Kamala Harris to finally go and see the tremendous destruction and death that they've created.”

Republicans have tried to make Harris the face of the administration’s policies, charging that she and Biden were ignoring the issue because both had yet to visit the border. Harris, during her trip to Latin America, told reporters she was focused on “tangible” results “as opposed to grand gestures.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.