When asked about illegal immigration in an apperance with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, Harris criticized the Trump administration.
“Would you call the border secure?” Todd asked.
“I think there is no question that we have to do what the president and I asked Congress to do — the first request we made — pass a bill to create a pathway to citizenship,” Harris replied.
“The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.”
Todd referenced the fact that this year the number of illegal crossings is expected to eclipse all other years.
“We’re going to have two million people cross this border for the first time ever. You’re confident this border’s secure?” he inquired.
“We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration, but there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years,” Harris said.
The vice president said that a “pathway to citizenship” does not yet exist because “people are playing politics” on what was once a “bipartisan issue.”
From the beginning of this fiscal year through July, there were over 1.8 million enforcement encounters with illegal immigrants. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has not yet published the August operational update with last month’s statistics.
The agency has also confiscated over 10,600 pounds of fentanyl and myriad other illegal drugs so far this fiscal year.
On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office announced that over 100 foreign individuals have been bussed from Texas and dropped off outside Harris’ residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
They are from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela, according to the governor’s office.
“The Biden-Harris Administration continues ignoring and denying the historic crisis at our southern border, which has endangered and overwhelmed Texas communities for almost two years,” Abbott said in a news release.
“Our supposed Border Czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, has yet to even visit the border to see firsthand the impact of the open border policies she has helped implement, even going so far as to claim the border is ‘secure.’ Texas will continue sending migrants to sanctuary cities like Washington, D.C. until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border.”
Others have also criticized Harris’ remarks, including elected officials and former CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan.
“Busses (sic) full of illegal migrants just arrived outside Kamala Harris’ house in DC. Does she still think the border is secure?” Congressman Troy Nehls (R-TX-22) tweeted.
In an interview with The National Desk, Morgan called Harris’ claim an “absolute lie.”
“They took the most secure border in our lifetime and they unsecured it,” Morgan said.
Since April, the State of Texas has transported more than 10,000 individuals with federal documentation to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago on a voluntary basis.
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Hayden Sparks
Hayden Sparks is a senior reporter for The Texan and a lifelong resident of the Lone Star State. He has coached competitive speech and debate and has been involved in politics since a young age. One of Hayden's favorite quotes is by Sam Houston: "Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."
