TEXAS — Vice President Kamala Harris is coming to Texas. She is set to tour the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso on Friday and it will be the first time she is doing so since being sworn in. As the Biden administration faces criticism over its handling of the surge of migrant crossings, Harris has taken a lot of heat for not visiting the border sooner.

What You Need To Know

  • Vice President Kamala Harris will tour U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso on Friday

  • This tour will be her first visit, since sworn in

  • President Joe Biden assigned Harris to be the lead in addressing the social and econmic factors for migration from Central America 

  • Although some Texas lawmakers find solace in her visit, others feel she should redirect the location of her border trip

Wednesday, the backlash continued, but this time, over where the Vice President is deciding to go and the timing of it all.

“This trip on Friday, which is being done in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security. Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas is, of course, joining her on this trip. And the planning and timing of it was done in coordination with them, is part of the coordinated effort between her office, her work, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, to continue to address the root causes and work in coordination to get the situation under control,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead efforts to address migration from Central America by targeting the economic and social reasons why people want to leave their home countries.

“I’m happy that she's coming down to the border, because when she was in Central America, she was looking at the push factors. She needs to look at the pull factors, what brings people to the border,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, told Capital Tonight.

Moderate Democrats and Republicans have criticized Harris over her absence at the border. With the news of the El Paso trip, some Congressional GOP members believe she is going to the wrong place. Texas and Mexico share nearly 1,000 miles of the same border, but some lawmakers argue the lower Rio Grande Valley is at the epicenter of the migrant surge.

“By ignoring the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest Border Patrol sector along the U.S.-Texas-Mexico border, the Vice President is shifting the focus away from the most serious problems of the crisis that she's failed to solve or even contribute any constructive ideas to,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

When asked about the GOP’s criticism about where Harris is going, Dr. Richard Pineda, director of the Sam Donaldson Center for Communication Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso pointed to how the West Texas region has played a significant role in the asylum and demarcation process.

“I think that’s the first step in a little bit of political theatre,” Pineda said in an interview with Capital Tonight’s Karina Kling. “Quite frankly, the vice president or the president coming to any part of the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas is justified.”

Harris’ tour comes just days before former President Donald Trump joins Gov. Greg Abbott and House Republicans on the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott pledges to build a border wall. In a statement Abbott said in part, "Vice President Harris is ignoring the real problem areas along our southern border that are not protected by the border wall and are being overrun by the federal government's ill-thought-out open border policies. She will fail in her mission, if she refuses to speak to residents of the Del Rio sector whose homes and ranches are being overrun by gangs and smugglers.”

“You’re having former President Trump visit next week, it puts a lot of political pressure on them to act. Sadly, I think that’s what it has taken, that political pressure,” U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio, said in a virtual press conference.

Cuellar, who does not support the governor’s push for further construction on the border wall in Texas, agrees there is more “activity” in the valley and hopes the vice president eventually makes her way there.

“For me, living in the border, it's important that she sits down with people from the community, a cross-section of the people of the community: mayors, judges, police chiefs, Border Patrol agents, other folks down there, so she can understand what’s happening at the border. The pulse of the community is key,” Cuellar said.

In a statement, Trump claimed if he and Abbott “weren’t going there next week, she would have never gone.” When asked if the former president motivated the trip, Psaki said the vice president previously mentioned wanting to travel to the border when the time was deemed appropriate.