Border czar Kamala Harris is heading to a southern border state Thursday, but don't expect her to discuss the nation's migrant crisis.
That's because Harris's first official vice-presidential visit to Arizona is to talk green energy, not the record number of migrants flooding the southern border under Harris and President Joe Biden. Harris is set to arrive Thursday afternoon in Tonopah, Ariz., which is roughly 100 miles northeast of Yuma, a busy border town that in December 2021 issued an emergency proclamation over the "unprecedented number of migrants entering the area." But Harris—whom Biden tapped in 2021 to lead the White House's migration efforts—won't be addressing the issue. Instead, she's in the Grand Canyon State to tout a wind and solar energy project.
This is not the first time the Biden administration has missed an opportunity to confront the ongoing chaos at the southern border during a trip down south. Biden on Jan. 9 met with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which came as escalating cartel violence swept the Latin American nation. Biden went on to release a list of commitments he secured through the Mexico City meeting, though the list did not include the word "cartel." It did, however, include pledges to advance "diversity, equity, and inclusion," "promote racial justice," "tackle the climate crisis," and "integrate a gender perspective" into natural disaster response efforts.
Republican National Committee spokesman Nainoa Johsens said Harris's decision to prioritize green energy over the border shows that the Biden administration "doesn't care" about the migrant crisis.
"Failed border czar Kamala Harris is looking at power lines and solar panels while the southern border remains wide open and drugs and violent crime are pouring into Arizona," Johsens told the Washington Free Beacon. "The Biden administration has completely abandoned our border communities."
The White House did not return a request for comment.
While Harris in 2022 oversaw a fiscal-year record high of 2.4 million border encounters, she has refused to take responsibility for the crisis. Instead, she's blamed Republicans for the administration's migrant woes, saying in December that congressional Republicans have shown "an unwillingness to engage in any meaningful reform that could actually fix a lot of what we are witnessing."