EL PASO, Texas (CN) — Vice President Kamala Harris has vowed to address what she calls “the root causes of migration” from Central America, including poverty and violence. That mission took her to Guatemala earlier this month, where she urged potential migrants: “Do not come.”
Now, in her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border as vice president, Harris stopped by El Paso on Friday morning to meet with border officials and nonprofit leaders who are grappling with a recent uptick in migration.
“It’s good to be back in Texas,” Harris told a group of reporters at the El Paso International Airport shortly after landing. Flanked by officials including Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, she reiterated her message that when it comes to the migrants arriving in the United States — legally or otherwise — “most people don’t want to leave home.”
Instead, when they do, “it’s usually because either they are fleeing some type of harm, or they cannot take care of the simple and basic needs of their family,” Harris continued. “We are here today to address and talk about what has brought people to the U.S. border.”
The trip comes as Democrats attempt to portray a gentler image on migration issues after the Trump years — and as many Republicans double-down on Trump’s hardline immigration rhetoric.
It was here in El Paso in 2017 where the Trump administration first tried out a pilot program of its controversial family-separations policy. In 2019, a white gunman killed 23 people in an El Paso Walmart in response to what he called a “Hispanic invasion.”
Against the backdrop of El Paso and its twin city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, Harris sought to ensure Americans that the Biden administration was taking a more compassionate approach, especially as crossing numbers pick up at the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Congress, Democrats have proposed including a pathway to citizenship as part of their infrastructure bill. Republicans have instead played up what they describe as chaos on the border, with several Republican lawmakers — including Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn — touring the Rio Grande in an armed patrol boat in March.
Perhaps no Republican has leaned into this rhetoric quite like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who declared a disaster in his state in response to what he calls border “carnage” and “the Biden administration’s open-border policies.”
Abbott has promised to build a wall, vowed to jail migrants for minor infractions and warned that Texans are being “riddled with crime.” Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to tour the border with Abbott next week, in a trip that will likely stand in stark contrast to Harris’ El Paso visit.
Around noon local time, before departing on an Air Force One flight to Los Angeles, Harris once again addressed reporters on the tarmac of the El Paso airport.
She said her trip — which included visits with church leaders and a group of unaccompanied migrant children — had reinforced her belief that a variety factors in Central America, including corruption and food insecurity, were forcing migrants to leave their homes when they might otherwise prefer to stay.
The United States should work to address these root issues, she said, not only because it was good for America but because America was a “neighbor in the Western Hemisphere.” She urged fellow politicians to “not lose sight of the fact that we’re talking about human beings.”
“These issues must be addressed in a way that’s informed by fact and informed by reality,” Harris added. “The president and I are absolutely committed to ensuring our immigration system is orderly and humane.”
Will Democrats’ kinder approach to immigration issues play well with voters? Yes, say Democratic pollsters and policymakers who have studied the issue.
In a call with reporters on Friday morning, a group of them outlined some of the immigration policy priorities that they say have broad support, including a pathway for so-called Dreamers who arrived in the United States as children (71% approval) and for farmworkers (also 71%). Republicans are leaning on “scare tactics” about the border, they said, because they have little to offer when it comes to immigration reform.
Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration reform group America’s Voice, described the Republican strategy as an effort to “get white-grievance voters upset about the ‘Brown Other’ who are coming from outside the country to take ours.” Gary Segura, co-founder and president of the Latino-focused polling group BSP Research, said that Republicans had “paid a price in the suburbs” for their hardline rhetoric, in part because “white female suburban voters … do not care for the politics of meanness and tend to vote against that.”
It was a good political moment for Democrats on immigration, the experts said — but it also came with risks. “Latino voters have been promised action on immigration in the mid-2000s,” Segura explained, and with Democrats now controlling the White House and both branches of Congress, they “must act.”
Otherwise, he said, Democrats risked losing momentum — and voters. “Not with people switching parties or switching votes,” he clarified, “but with people simply not turning out.”
Then again, as border politics become increasingly politicized, there’s likely only so much Democrats can do to reach voters who already disagree with them. As Harris toured a Border Patrol facility on Friday, conservative politicians and news outlets were already abuzz with talk of how Harris was visiting the border too late and/or in the wrong places.
Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol union, told Fox News that “you don’t go to El Paso to see what is actually going on at the border,” despite the fact that El Paso is on the border and has three ports of entry. Abbott’s campaign put out a new attack ad accusing the Biden administration of “ignorance” on border issues. It depicted a photo of Harris with the words “missing in action” superimposed.
The government's office also issued several border-related news releases on Friday, including one calling for “jailers to assist border sheriffs” with detaining migrants and another decrying the costs he said Texas county governments were facing “as the Biden administration continues to ignore the crisis at the border.” For voters already inclined to agree with the hardline Texas governor, such rhetoric will likely provide more comfort than Harris’ talk of good neighborly relations.
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