WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the El Paso, Texas, central processing center, which is a U.S. Customs & Border Protection Facility, and meet migrants during her visit to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, spokesperson Symone Sanders said.
This will be the first time Harris will visit the border since becoming the vice president and taking a lead role in immigration issues.
The administration inherited “a broken and inhumane immigration system,” Sanders said during a call with reporters on Thursday. “The previous administration’s policies led to chaos at the border, family separation, inhumane conditions, dismal diplomacy towards and with Central America.”
Sanders said the vice president’s trip to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this year was about addressing the root causes, and “the border visit tomorrow is about the effects.”
Harris, who visited the U.S.-Mexico border many times as a senator and attorney general from California, was assailed by Republicans when she visited Mexico and Guatemala this month.
The trip to El Paso, which was announced a day earlier, appeared to be a result of increasing pressure on her to make the high-profile trip.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
