Former President Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he would join Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an official visit to the “decimated” southern border on June 30 as Vice President and border czar Kamala Harris continues to face criticism for not visiting the border since being tapped by President Joe Biden to lead border efforts in March.
“The Biden Administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in U.S history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in U.S history. It’s an unmitigated disaster zone,” Trump wrote in a statement emailed to American Military News.
Trump slammed the current administration’s handling of the border, accusing both Biden and Harris of handing “control of our border over to cartels, criminals, and coyotes. Drug dealers, MS-13 gang members, human smugglers, sex traffickers, and the criminal elements of the world now have free reign.”
“We went from detain-and-remove to catch-and-release. We went from having border security that was the envy of the world to a lawless border that is now pitied around the world,” Trump’s statement read. “Hospitals and schools are getting crushed and public health is being sacrificed all in service of a radical left anti-borders agenda. Our brave border agents and courageous ICE officers have been illegally stopped from doing their jobs. Our Nation is now one giant sanctuary city where even dangerous criminals are being cut loose and set free inside the U.S interior on a daily basis.”
Trump went on to blast both Biden and Harrs for failing to visit the border to view “the wreckage they created.”
“If this weren’t bad enough, Biden and Harris won’t even tour the scenes of the wreckage they created, or come down and visit with the Border Patrol and ICE heroes risking their lives to defend our Nation at a time when the White House is doing everything it can to make their job totally impossible,” Trump stated.
“What Biden and Harris have done, and are continuing to do on our border, is a grave and willful dereliction of duty,” he continued.
Last week, Vice President Harris laughed off plans to visit the US-Mexico border during an interview with NBC, saying she would visit the border “at some point.”
During an international press conference in Guatemala, Harris said that she will not visit America’s southern border because to do so would be a “grand gesture.”
On March 24, Biden announced that Harris would lead efforts at the southern border “because she’s the most qualified person to do it.”