Harris to visit Mexico, Guatemala 'soon' amid GOP criticism

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Biden administration's point person on stemming the flow of Central American migrants coming to the U.S., said Wednesday she will travel to Mexico and Guatemala “soon” amid mounting GOP criticism.

“Our focus is to deal with the root causes, and I'm looking forward to traveling, hopefully, as my first trip, to the Northern Triangle — stopping in Mexico and then going to Guatemala sometime soon,” Harris said Wednesday at a virtual roundtable of experts on the Northern Triangle nations of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The vice president said she would go to Guatemala "as soon as possible."

The White House has taken pains to specify that the president has tasked Harris specifically with addressing the flow of migrants in Central America and not the situation at the U.S. southern border. But a chorus of Republican lawmakers and conservative media pundits have nonetheless laid into Harris over what they have characterized as her inaction on the issue.

"It has been 3 weeks since President Biden appointed VP Harris to oversee the border. Since then, the crisis has only continued to spiral out of control," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wrote in a tweet Wednesday. "The VP has not traveled to the border, held a press conference, or offered ANY plan to mitigate the ongoing crisis."

At a press conference on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) held up a prop milk carton with Harris's picture on it underneath the word "missing."

Biden’s move to put Harris in charge of the administration's immigration response in the Northern Triangle came amid a growing number of migrants, including many unaccompanied children, arriving at the nation's southern border. In March, the U.S. took a record number of unaccompanied children into its custody, forcing the the Biden administration to add shelter capacity and cut the length of time it takes to transfer children from federal custody to vetted sponsors.

“These are issues that are not going to be addressed overnight, in terms of the root causes issue,” Harris said Wednesday. “A large part of our focus is diplomatic, in terms of what we can do, in a way that is about working with these countries.”

At a briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn’t say if Harris was planning on visiting the border specifically, but said that Harris will be a “high-level conduit” and talk with leaders in the region. Psaki stressed that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has visited the border.