Columnist: Harris is ‘making a mistake’ by avoiding visit to southern border amid immigration crisis

Vice President Kamala Harris has attracted widespread criticism for her actions since being tasked with heading up the Biden administration’s response to an immigration surge.

A number of media figures have begun to take notice of her reluctance to visit the U.S.-Mexico border, as San Diego Times columnist Donald H. Harrison recently revealed.

“To facilitate her understanding”

In a piece published on Thursday, he wrote that the vice president is “making a mistake” by not witnessing the border problem in person.

“Harris should go to the border to facilitate her understanding of the root causes of migration,” Harrison argued.

Specifically, he wants to see her “sit with some unaccompanied minors, as well as with adults seeking asylum, and ask them to narrate exactly what led them to make the long trek to the United States.”

According to Harrison, such first-hand accounts “would provide Harris with more insight than any statistic-laden governmental report” on the topic.

“Are the migrants coming here because the United States has more job prospects?” he wrote. “Did smugglers persuade them that there is now an open border policy under President Biden?”

“You should come”

If the answer to the latter question is yes, it would seem that the Biden administration has played a role in encouraging undocumented immigrants to cross the border by implementing softer border policies and reversing many of the orders implemented under the Trump administration.

Shortly after taking office, Biden announced that he would be rescinding former President Donald Trump’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, which mandated that asylum-seekers remain outside of the U.S. while their claims were being evaluated.

The president also enacted an order to halt the construction of the border wall that began under his precessor. According to Fox News, funding for another 350 miles of that wall had been allocated when the executive action was announced.

During one Democratic presidential primary debate, Biden made his position clear, asserting: “We’re a nation that says, ‘You want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.'”

For her part, Harris once compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to members of the Ku Klux Klan. Given these facts, it should not be surprising that one undocumented immigrant revealed to ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz in March that he would “definitely not” have come if Trump had won a second term in the White House.

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