Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday again emphasized that she is working to address the “root causes” of the illegal immigration crisis facing the US, insisting that people who make the arduous trek “don’t want to leave home” — despite having no first-hand experience surveilling the situation on the ground at the border.
Harris was asked to go into more detail on the administration’s response to the surge of illegal immigrants because President Biden didn’t offer a “concrete” plan during his first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday evening.
“I am responsible for and have been taking on the responsibility of dealing with the root causes of migration. And here’s how I think about it. Listen, when you look at the Northern Triangle … you have to ask and realize that I think most people don’t want to leave home,” Harris said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
A malnourished girl plays in a dumpster in a gang-infested neighborhood in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe vice president said most people don’t want to leave their “grandmother,” they don’t want to leave the place they call home, and when they do, it’s usually because of “one or two reasons.”
A farmer plants corn seed in an area of Hondoras that experienced a drought. ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP via Getty Images“Because they don’t have opportunities there to fulfill their basic needs like feeding their children or keeping a roof over their head, or they’re fleeing some kind of harm,” said Harris, who was named by Biden to oversee immigration in March but has yet to visit the scene.
People in Guatemala carry the coffin of a wrestler, Laisha Cameros, known as “La Hija del Zorro,” who was shot dead during an assault in 2019. JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty ImagesShe mentioned the back-to-back hurricanes that hit the region, the rise in gang violence, and how drought has devastated local economies, which are based primarily on agriculture, as factors to prompt people to make the journey to the US.
A man walks among the debris of a house at the coast neighborhood of San Pedro after Hurricane Iota hit on November 17, 2020, in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. Maynor Valenzuela/Getty ImagesNoting that the residents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are “our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere,” Harris said the US needs to help them.
A US Border Patrol agent registers immigrant families after they crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico on April 27, 2021, in Roma, Texas. John Moore/Getty ImagesShe said she’s met with cabinet officials, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, and foreign leaders about investing in the Northern Triangle countries.
“So this is the work that we need to do. It will not be fixed overnight. Look, if this were easy, it would have been fixed a long time ago. It’s not a new issue. But we are prepared to make the investment and to get in there for the long haul, to do what is necessary to address the reasons people flee,” she said.
