Kamala Harris Goes to the Border – Sort Of

After weeks upon weeks of avoiding the southern border, President Biden’s immigration overseer, Vice President Harris, has finally traveled close to the border – well, sort of.  She visited El Paso, Texas – the political base of officeholder wannabe Beto O’Rourke.  It was also the site of a horrific mass shooting in 2019.

Yes, El Paso IS technically a border town, but it is not where all the action and chaos is happening.  That is taking place about 1000 miles away in the Rio Grande Valley region.  Think of it this way.  The distance between El Paso and the location of the real border crisis is further than the distance from Washington, D.C. to Chicago.

Yes, Harris did meet with border officials and police.  Based on the photographs, they could have been at the Canadian border.  And yes, they did find a few migrants to pose for pictures.  But there was none of those masses crossing the border.  There were no kids in cages – or being thrown over 12-foot walls.  There were no pictures of the daily arrests. 

Harris seemed to have been avoiding a trip to the border solely to avoid confronting the actual chaos and crisis that her boss and her Democrat colleagues caused.  She did not want to have her photos taken with the thousands of migrants jammed into holding facilities – despite the administrations efforts to conceal those conditions by quickly sending border-crossers off to diverse and distant holding facilities around the country.  It did not work. 

The wave of migrants has continued to overwhelm the border facilities.  Unaccompanied minors are still jammed into overcrowded enclosures (dare we say cages?).  They are sleeping side-by-side on the floor under those silver mylar covers.

When the pressure to visit the border became too much to bear, Harris condescended to show up at one of the least critical points.  Harris said it was not a last-minute decision.  She had indicated her intent to avoid the hot spot at the Rio Grande Valley with a trip to El Paso back in March.  Why when she planned to avoid the real crisis at the border makes any difference is lost on me. But that is her answer.

Harris was seen and photographed with border patrol personnel and a few folks awaiting processing.  There were so few asylum seekers that one may wonder why we need to protect that stretch of the border at all.  In fact, there appeared to be more anti-Harris protestors (pictured above) than migrants.

Harris said the immigrations issue should not be politicized before she went on an attack on Republicans – and blamed the Trump administration for the past policies.  She had no “deliverables” to bring to the situation.  She had no new plans.  No new efforts to diminish the flood of migrants.  No more enforcement personnel.  And no new security measures.  Nothing.  Just nice photos and threadbare narratives.

Harris’ visit to the border did achieve one important partisan political goal.  It distracted from the fact that Biden is yet to pay a visit to the southern border.  If – or when – he does, I suspect his handlers will find him a nice quiet spot to hold a picnic with a bunch of little children. 

Biden is heading to Florida.  Maybe when he is at the scene of that tragic condo collapse, he will later                                                 take a side trip to the border. I am kidding of course.

It is not easy to determine whether Harris’ worst move was her long delay in showing up at the border – or whether it was this patently meaningless public relations stunt.  In either case, Harris continues to show a contemptuous disregard for the gravity of the immigration crisis.

So, there ‘tis.