Harris pushes for immigration reform legislation during visit to U.S.-Mexico border

Responding to a question about meeting with five girls who are in a child migrant detention center in Texas, Vice President Kamala Harris said the encounter was a reminder that immigration shouldn’t be reduced to politics, and urged Congress to pass reform legislation on the issue.

Video Transcript

- We understand that you were able to meet five young girls at the facility at age 9 to 16. Were you also able to meet other migrants while you were there or during the day today? [AUDIO OUT] inform your understanding of the problems that are currently happening at the border, not just the [INAUDIBLE].

KAMALA HARRIS: So I met with the children, with the young girls. And you know, it was interesting. They have obviously fled great harm there without their parents.

They are also full of hope. They were asking me questions-- how do you become the first woman vice president? But it also reminds me of the fact that-- that this is this issue cannot be reduced to a political issue.

We're talking about children. We're talking about families. We're talking about suffering. And our approach has to be thoughtful and effective. And we can take all of these perspectives into account and have meaningful good public policy. If we just stop the rhetoric and the finger pointing and do what we need to do, including as Chairman Durbin has been doing for years, agreeing that we need immigration reform in our country. And that Congress must act.

Let's do the work of agreeing you can't just react to a problem without solving it at its roots. Let's agree to that. So when I think about what I heard and saw today, I will tell you, it was very reaffirming of everything that I heard from someone else in Guatemala, everything that I discussed with President Lopez Obrador in Mexico about the partnership between the United States and Mexico to invest in the root causes.

Seeing that there is a very clear and direct connection. It literally is direct and clear. But-- but I will tell you, one of the things that every place has been a theme, has been people don't want to leave home if they don't have to.