Kamala Harris meets with border officials, tours port of entry in visit to Texas border

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday ended her trip to El Paso, Texas, one of many cities along the Mexico border handling a dramatic increase of migrants trying to enter the U.S., by noting she saw "a very clear and direct" connection as to why many migrants are fleeing Central America to the United States' southern border.

“My trip to Guatemala and Mexico was about addressing the root causes," Harris said during final remarks on her trip. "The stories that I heard and the interactions that we had today reinforce the nature of those root causes."

Harris, who was tasked with focusing on the diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration, toured a Customs and Border Patrol processing center, met with a group of unaccompanied children, visited a port of entry and met with local community and faith advocates.

Harris, who has maintained her focus is on diplomatic relations in Central America and Mexico, rather than the situation at the border, has been working on diplomatic efforts to stem migration from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

She noted in her remarks that a consistent theme she's seen during her visits abroad and to the border is that "people don't want to leave home if they don't have to."

She also called on Congress to "stop the finger-pointing" and pass immigration legislation.

"This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue," Harris said. "We're talking about children, we're talking about families, we're talking about suffering, and our approach has to be thoughtful and effective."

In remarks ahead of a roundtable with community and faith leaders, Harris said she was looking forward to having a "candid" discussion on why migrants are coming and what they are seeing on the ground.

"It is very important to the president and me, that we maintain not only access, but a role for you leaders to participate in our leadership around what needs to be done and what can be done," Harris said.

Harris is being accompanied on the trip by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who has been helping with negotiations on immigration legislation on Capitol Hill, and Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents parts of El Paso.

After arriving Friday morning, Harris toured a central processing facility run by CBP and was greeted by Gloria Chavez, chief patrol agent of the El Paso Sector as well as other border patrol officials. During her tour, Harris spoke with CBP officials working at the facility. At one point, she stood over the shoulder of a border patrol agent as he walked her through his work on a computer.

CBP officials described new technology being used to quickly process migrants and cut down on work for border patrol agents. The officials also explained to Harris how a working group that was created by Mayorkas has helped streamline the process. The officials said they hoped to work with the Department of Justice to get immigration judges into their system to ease the process of giving migrants court dates.

"You guys have made incredible advances and success in just the last couple of months," Harris told the CBP officials.

Harris also met with a group of five young girls ages 9 to 16, the vice president's office said. The girls, who were from Central America, drew pictures for the vice president.

Harris made an unannounced trip to the Paso del Norte port of entry for a tour of the facility. At one point, Harris was in an area that held unaccompanied children. A border patrol agent showed photos of how overcrowded the area was in 2016. Harris asked the agent "when did things improve," to which the agent said in 2018 and even more in 2019.

Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force Two that he recommended the vice president visit El Paso "because it is one of the busiest sectors" across the border "and it provides the vice president with an opportunity to see the full array" of challenges facing the Department of Homeland Security.

"When you talk about addressing the root causes of migration, all of the entirety of the immigration work of the administration is connected. What's happening at the border is directly connected to what's happening in Central America," Symone Sanders, Harris' chief spokeswoman, told reporters in a call Thursday evening.

She said Harris' trip will help "inform" a strategy on the root causes of migration that the administration will release "in the coming weeks."

President Joe Biden's administration has faced a large increase of migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. In May, CBP had 180,034 encounters with migrants at the border, the highest number in at least two decades. The majority of migrants were turned away under Title 42, a Trump-era measure that allows migrants to be expelled to stop the spread of COVID-19, and some of the encounters were by individuals who have repeatedly tried to cross the border.

CBP had 22,219 encounters with migrants at the border in the El Paso region in May, according to data from CBP.

Harris’ visit came days before former President Donald Trump goes to the border with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. A group of pro-Trump protesters held signs outside the CBP facility that Harris visited Friday, protesting the vice president's visit.

The vice president for months has been pressured by Republicans and some Democrats on Capitol Hill to go to the border, arguing she needs to witness the toll the increase in migrants is taking on border towns and facilities.

As part of her role addressing the root causes of migration, Harris earlier this month made her first trip abroad to Guatemala and Mexico, where she met with Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei and Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

During an interview conducted during her trip to Guatemala, Harris was criticized after she said “I haven't been to Europe” either when responding to why she hadn’t been to the border yet.

Speaking with reporters on Friday, Harris said that it was always the plan to visit the border.

"The reality of it is that we have to deal with causes, and we have to deal with the effects," Harris told reporters after deplaning from Air Force Two. "So being in Guatemala, being in Mexico, talking with Mexico as a partner, frankly, on this issue, was about addressing the causes, and then coming to the border... is about looking at the effects of what we have seen happening in Central America."

Harris during her speech said she visited El Paso, rather than the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, which has seen the most encounters of migrants coming to the border because many of Trump's hardline immigration policies originated in El Paso. She noted that a pilot program for the former president's "zero-tolerance policy" that led to children and parents being separated at the border began in El Paso.

Contributing: Ledyard King

Reach Rebecca Morin at Twitter @RebeccaMorin_

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kamala Harris border visit to El Paso comes after months of pressure