Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Texas Governor Greg Abbott Tuesday after Republicans blamed the deaths of 53 migrants in a torrid tractor-trailer on the Biden administration.
“[These are] people who — it seems from what we know so far — are trying to live better lives,” Harris said in an interview with NPR. “How the governor of that state responded really highlights part of the problem because his response when there were 50 bodies in his state was straight to the point of politics.”
“This death is at Biden,” Abbott said on Twitter late Monday, shortly after the tragedy was discovered. “That is the result of a deadly open border policy.”
“They point to the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law,” the governor added.
Biden hit back in a statement accusing Abbott – though not named – of “political pride.”
Abbott again blamed President Biden on Wednesday, telling a news conference that the large rig carrying the doomed migrants was not checked as it passed the Border Patrol checkpoint in Encinal, Texas.
“It wasn’t checked because the Border Patrol didn’t have the resources to inspect all the trucks and as a result, the Border Patrol didn’t have the ability to save those lives,” Abbott said. “Mr. President, you can fix it.”
Harris insisted to NPR that the Biden administration was indeed working to fix the crisis at the border.
“Our administration has taken [smuggling] quite seriously,” he said.
“There have been more than 2,000 arrests in just the last three months. I think there were at least eight charges going on,” he added. “We have to face it, right? In terms of the consequences of criminal behavior resulting in death.”
Harris has had a difficult relationship with border issues since Biden tapped him in March 2021 to address the “root causes” of migration from Latin America.
Harris last year visited Guatemala and Mexico, but his June trip was overshadowed by his difficulty answering reporters’ questions about why he had not visited the US-Mexico border. Harris visited the border shortly after that trip, but only after former President Donald Trump booked a visit to denounce his successor.
While criticism of Harris’s Republicans is unrelenting, at least one Democratic lawmaker in the border state said in December that he too had stopped working with immigration officials.
“I say this with great respect to him: I’m moving on,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told the New York Times. “He was assigned the job, he doesn’t seem too interested in this, so we’ll move on to someone else who takes care of this matter.”
In late May, the Post’s analysis found that Harris had hosted only one public event so far this year focused on migration — a January 27 trip to Honduras to attend the inauguration of the country’s new president. While there, Harris said his focus on “root causes” of migration would not solve the US-Mexico border crisis “overnight.”
Meanwhile, Abbott announced the creation of additional checkpoints, task forces and fences on Wednesday, in a bid to prevent illegal border crossings and prevent people smuggling.
However, earlier attempts by Abbott to supplement what he characterized as weak federal border enforcement did not go as planned. In April, governors were forced to cancel Department of Public Security cargo inspections after they slowed cross-border trade and cost the state economy about $100 million a day.
