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Kamala Harris skips US-Mexico border-security meeting, goes to New Jersey instead
Several top members of the Biden administration were in Mexico City on Friday for a meeting with Mexican officials regarding security along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Vice President Kamala Harris wasn't among them.
Politics
Several top members of the Biden administration were in Mexico City on Friday for a meeting with Mexican officials regarding security along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Vice President Kamala Harris wasn't among them.
Harris, whom President Biden appointed in March to manage the U.S. response to the migrant crisis along the border, went to New Jersey instead.
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.
"Today's High-Level Security Dialogue marks an important new phase in the US-Mexico security partnership," Mayorkas tweeted Friday. "We will work together under a new framework to guide our joint efforts, and work toward our shared goals of security and prosperity for our two nations."
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.
She then traveled to Los Angeles again the very next weekend, spending the July 4 holiday at her home.
Harris has faced relentless criticism from Republicans, who say her avoidance of the border region has deprived her of valuable first-hand knowledge of border-related issues.
"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.