Drop politics to fix immigration, Harris says at US-Mexico border

Vice President Kamala Harris visited a border patrol facility near the US-Mexico border on Friday and urged a focus on children and practical solutions to migration, in a trip meant to blunt Republican criticism of White House immigration policies.

The visit, her first since becoming vice president five months ago, came amid a rise in migrants caught crossing the border, which has sparked outrage from Republicans, who favour the stricter immigration policies implemented by former President Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, tasked Harris with spearheading his administration's handling of the broader issue of people fleeing Central American countries for the United States. She visited Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month.

"This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue. We're talking about children, we're talking about families, we're talking about suffering. And our approach has to be thoughtful and effective," Harris said at the conclusion of her short trip.

US authorities have made more than one million arrests of migrants at the US-Mexico border so far in fiscal year 2021, according to preliminary figures.

Republicans have criticised Biden for rolling back restrictive Trump-era immigration policies even as arrests of migrants at the US-Mexico border have reached 20-year highs in recent months. They have also criticised Harris for not visiting the border sooner.

Harris was accompanied in El Paso by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin and Democratic Representative from Texas Veronica Escobar, who called the El Paso area the new "Ellis Island," a reference to the famed area in New York Harbour that processed millions of immigrants as they entered the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Immigration, and particularly the arrival of asylum seekers at the US southern border, has been a hot-button issue for decades. Multiple attempts to reform US laws and create a pathway to citizenship for the millions of immigrants living in the country illegally have failed in Congress.

Democrats and activists have pressed Biden to further scale back enforcement and ensure humane treatment of migrant children and families arriving at the border.

During the trip, Harris also met with advocates, who urged her administration to end a Trump-era policy that allows US authorities to rapidly expel migrants to Mexico or their home countries, according to one of the participants, Fernando Garcia, the executive director at the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights.