By Sandy Fitzgerald
Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to El Paso will not result in “anything of substance,” as she’s traveling to the wrong location to spotlight the crisis, and the trip is only being made to address a “political optic nightmare” for the Biden administration, former acting Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan told Newsmax Friday.
“There’s a reason she’s going to El Paso, and she’s 1,000 miles away from the epicenter, which is the Rio Grande Valley (or) McAllen, where sector 19 has apprehended over 275,000 illegal aliens,” Morgan said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “They’re going to go to facilities that are permanent hardened facilities that that are going to be less crowded, really in some areas, state of the art facilities that they’re going to go to and again it’s going to present some for some really nice photo ops, but she’s not going to go to the heart of the crisis, and here’s it’s not just about what she’s not going to see.”
Americans should be demanding more than a “series of photo ops and addressing optics” from the White House, however, said Morgan.
“What they should be asking for is concrete actions that this administration is going to take to solve the border crisis and secure our borders,” he said. “That’s not what we’re going to get.”
Harris also won’t be asking any tough questions of border security officers or local law enforcement, including about drugs or the bodies of migrants that are being found, said Morgan.
“We’re not going to hear the results of those questions, and we’re not going to hear one concrete substantive action from this administration to secure our border,” said Morgan.
El Paso also has far more of the tools for fighting illegal immigration, a “robust, strategic set of tools, policies, and resources” that do not exist in the Rio Grande Valley, which also makes the situation there more secure, said Morgan.
Harris’ office is denying that her El Paso trip is being made to head off former President Donald Trump’s visit next Friday or that it is being made because of political pressure.
President Joe Biden put Harris in charge of the border situation earlier this year, but said her focus was to be on stemming the migration problem at its roots in the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. She recently traveled to Guatemala and Mexico but has come under fire for laughing when she’s been asked when she plans to visit the border.
Nothing but a photo opt for her. She had to get ahead of Trump and now she can check off that box as been there done that.