Texas lawmaker on VP Harris' trip to border: Admin has forgotten about Hispanics
Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, rips V.P. Kamala Harris' trip to the border, arguing the administration has not wanted to have a discussion about immigration.
Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to face criticism over the weekend for her recent trip to El Paso, Texas.
TEXAS CONGRESSMAN GONZALES REACTS TO HARRIS VISITING BORDER IN EL PASO: ‘NOW WHAT?’
On Friday, Harris visited an El Paso border facility nearly 100 days after being appointed by President Joe Biden to address the immigration crisis at the southern border.
During a press conference, Harris touted "extreme progress" made by the Biden administration in tackling the migrant surge despite inheriting a "tough situation" due to the "disastrous effects" of the Trump administration's border policies.
When asked why she visited El Paso, instead of areas that have been more acutely hit, like the Rio Grande Valley Sector, Harris explained that El Paso was where a number of Trump policies, like the Remain-in-Mexico policy and child separation policies, were implemented.
REP. ANDY BIGGS: KAMALA HARRIS ‘VISITS’ BORDER – HERE'S THE REAL REASON SHE WENT
Texas Republican Senator Jon Cornyn shared a New York Post op-ed on Twitter Saturday titled ‘Why Kamala’s photo-op trip to the border won’t do much to slow the waves of migrants’, adding the words "clueless in El Paso" to the front of the headline.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is set to visit the border on Wednesday with former President Donald Trump, shared a separate tweet from Cornyn quoting the Post article on Sunday. He added that Harris "didn't talk to Texans whose homes have been invaded, who've had guns brandished against them, whose property has been destroyed by gangs & cartel members coming across the border."
"She hasn't talked to families destroyed by Fentanyl smuggled into TX," Abbott continued. "She doesn't care."
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that while El Paso is a "vibrant border community," it is not the "epicenter of the crisis."
"The epicenter of the crisis…is 800 miles away in the Rio Grande Valley," Cruz told Fox News' Jesse Watters. "The reason she didn't go to the Rio Grande Valley is because that's where the Biden cages are. That's where you see cage after cage after cage of little boys and little girls on the floor, no beds, no mats, no cots, side by side one after the other after the other wrapped in reflective emergency blankets. That's where you see facilities with a rate of COVID positivity of 10%. And what Kamala and Joe Biden desperately wanted to avoid is the TV cameras filming those kids in the Biden cages. So she went as far away as you can go in the state of Texas to say she went to the border."
He argued that Harris did not offer any solutions or answers during her press conference and attributed the rise in immigration to the Biden administration's decisions to halt building a border wall, reinstating the "catch and release" policy and overturning the Remain in Mexico policy, which Cruz said "produced the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years."
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More than 180,000 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in May, an increase over the 178,000 encountered in April and 173,000 were encountered in March — all representing the highest numbers in years. March saw a big increase from the 100,000 migrants encountered in February.
May 2020, the height of the coronavirus pandemic, saw just over 23,000 migrant encounters, with approximately 144,000 in May 2019.
Fox News Adam Shaw contributed to this report
