Vice President Kamala Harris was President Joe Biden’s worst choice to head the administration’s actions on the southern border, Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday, pointing out her actions while serving on the Homeland Security Committee while he chaired it.
“She was on my committee and did nothing to help stop the flow (of migrants),” the Wisconsin Republican said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “She attended hearings and asked obnoxious questions to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and CBP (Customs and Border Protection), accusing them of inhumanity.”
She also had “no interest whatsoever” in working with former President Donald Trump’s administration to secure the border and stop the flow of immigrants, Johnson also said of Harris, who had at that time been California’s Democrat senator.
Biden made the announcement about Harris on Wednesday, and a senior administration official said later the decision was made as a display of trust in the vice president’s leadership and because of her law enforcement background as the one-time attorney general of California.
She is expected to meet in upcoming weeks with leaders in Mexico and in the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, from where most migrants coming across the U.S. border travel.
Harris has also been tasked with developing strategies to address the root causes of migration, including the lack of jobs and corruption in Central America.
Johnson will travel with other Republicans to the border Friday. He said they have invited members of the media with them to see the conditions there, but he doesn’t know if the coverage will be allowed.
“I guess the administration will block it because they don’t want the public to see what we will be able to see, the disaster at the border,” said Johnson. “This didn’t have to happen. It was predicted. During my chairmanship with the Homeland Security Committee, we held 30 hearings. We heard all this before and how these surges are used by sex traffickers and drug traffickers. We know the inhumanity this is going to be sparking, and the administration is blind to it.”
Trump, he said, was “able to largely fix the problem with families and unaccompanied children exploiting asylum laws” but Republicans brought that issue to an end “with virtually no help from Democrats” aside from Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who worked on the return to Mexico policy.
He added that the situation at the border now is “the tip of the iceberg.”
When President Barack Obama was in office, then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said a day when 1,000 people were apprehended was a bad day.
“I heard of a day where 6,000 people were apprehended and this happens day after day, overwhelming our personnel and our facilities,” said Johnson. “What this administration is going to do is release, back to catch and release.”
Source: Newmax
