Harris: Border Surge Is a ‘Huge Problem, I’m Not Going to Pretend It’s Not’

Vice President Kamala Harris admitted Wednesday on “CBS This Morning” that the surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border was a “huge problem.”

Anchor Gayle King said, Let’s look at what’s happening at the border. Rightly or wrongly, people are coming in record numbers because they believe the Biden administration has encouraged certainly children to come. What are you going to do about that? It’s chaotic. Some are calling it a crisis. You all, your team is under fire because both Republicans and Democrats said, look, if you’re going to change the Trump policy, the previous policy, at least have a game plan. There doesn’t appear right now to be a game plan.”

Harris said, “Well, OK, look, it’s a huge problem. I’m not going to pretend it’s not. it’s a huge problem.”

She continued, “Are we looking at overcrowding at the border in particular of these kids? Yes. Should these kids be in the custody of HHS, the Health and Human Services instead of the Border Patrol? Yes. Should we be processing these cases faster? Yes. This is, however, not going to be solved overnight. There are things that we need to do, especially since there was a system in place previously, before the last administration, to allow us to process these kids in their country of origin, that was dismantled. We’ve to reconstruct it. It’s not going to happen overnight. But you know, we have senior administration officials now in Mexico and Guatemala also dealing with in addition to what needs to happen at the border.”

Harris concluded, “Look we’ve been in office less than a hundred days we’re addressing it, we’re dealing with it, but it’s going to take some time, and are we frustrated? Are you frustrated? Yes, we are.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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