Donald Trump to visit US-Mexico border amid migrant crisis as Kamala Harris avoids it
Former US president Donald Trump has announced plans to visit the US-Mexico border, describing it as a ‘disaster zone’ created by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Trump will visit the border with the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, on June 30, as the pair look to pile pressure on the Biden administration to tackle America’s spiraling migrant crisis.
In May alone 180,034 immigrants were encountered at the border by US officials, the highest monthly figure since Homeland Security records began.
Trump’s visit to the border comes as Kamala Harris, who has been put in charge of trying to stem the number of migrants entering the US by Biden, has been heavily criticized for failing to visit the border at all during her assignment. Last week the so-called ‘border czar’, Harris, snapped at a reporter who quizzed her about why she is yet to visit the border during her quest to control the flow of immigrants.
Announcing his visit to the border in the lone star state, Trump said: ‘I have accepted the invitation of Texas governor Greg Abbott to join him on an official visit to our nation’s decimated southern border on June 30.
‘The Biden administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in US history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in US history. It’s an unmitigated disaster zone.’
The business tycoon also attacked both Biden and Harris in his statement, saying the pair are making the jobs of border officials an ‘impossible’ task.
He said: ‘If this weren’t bad enough, Biden and Harris won’t even tour the scenes of the wreckage they created, or come down and visit with the Border Patrol heroes risking their lives to defend our nation at a time when the White House is doing everything it can to make their job totally impossible.
‘What Biden and Harris have done, and are continuing to do on our border, is a grave and willful dereliction of duty.
‘My visit will hopefully shine a spotlight on these crimes against our nation.’
On March 24, President Joe Biden announced that he was putting Harris in charge of ‘stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.’
Since then Harris has insisted that her focus is on the root causes of migration, rather than dealing with the crisis at the border. She has pledged to work with officials in the likes of Guatemala and Mexico to help them stop migrants from fleeing to the US in the first place.
Border crossing have climbed steadily ever since Biden and Harris took office in January. Just over 100,000 border crossings were logged in February, a monthly figure that has almost doubled in just five months.
Critics of Biden’s believe that it was his relaxation of some of Donald Trump’s border restrictions that have in-part caused the record wave of refugees trying to enter the US.
Greg Abbott has been a long-time campaigner for tighter measures at the US border and has repeatedly called on the Biden administration to do more to stop the flow of migrants entering America.
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