Federal immigration authorities were instructed to clear the streets of migrants ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ one and only border trip, according to sources that spoke with the New York Post.
Before Harris made her first and only trip to see the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2021 in El Paso, federal agents were reportedly ordered to clean the area up to disguise the actual level of the border crisis, according to Border Patrol sources that spoke with the NYP. Agents were reportedly told to move illegal migrants out of holding facilities in order to put on a “show” for the vice president — and even went as far as to style unaccompanied minors’ hair.
“They rented out a ton of hotels and we spent hours moving out bodies. The kids that remained, we had to braid their hair,” one agent stated to the NYP, and added that they “made jokes about how the building was more secure than the whole border was.”
“She had zero interest in really seeing anything. It was rushed,” added a former official who was present during Harris’ visit.
President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to mitigate the then-fledgling border crisis in early 2021, with specific instruction for her to address the root causes of irregular migration from Central America. However, almost immediately after the announcement, her office began to distance Harris from the job description, according to CNN.
Following growing pressure to visit the border, Harris finally did so in June 2021. In the time since Harris was appointed to address the root causes of illegal immigration to the U.S., more than seven million migrants have tried crossing the U.S. southern border, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The El Paso sector was being bombarded with migrants at the time. There were more than 21,500 Border Patrol encounters in that month alone, according to CBP data.
“We sanitized all the aliens out of there to make it look good,” another agent told the NYP of the Harris visit.
After Biden announced he would no longer seek re-election over the weekend, Harris established herself as the presumptive presidential nominee for her party without a primary vote. In that time, numerous media outlets have attempted to downplay her appointed responsibilities on the border crisis.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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