Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to Honduras for the inauguration of President-elect Xiomara Castro in an effort to 'address the root causes' of illegal immigration.
The trip is part of Harris' effort to 'deepen the partnership' between the US and Honduras to combat corruption and migration, as well as advance economic growth, the White House announced Tuesday.
It comes a month after Harris announced a deal to provide $540million in new private industry investments in Central America. She attracted seven new companies and organizations to invest in Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Savlador in her effort to improve economic conditions and weed out corruption.
Among them are PepsiCo, Cargill and Parkdale Mills, all of whom pledged roughly $150million towards infrastructure projects. Some existing and expanded investments are coming from Mastercard, Microsoft and Nespresso.
Harris, 57, was tasked by President Joe Biden last year to lead the nation's border crisis response and has faced widespread criticisms over her efforts within the role.
Republicans have mockingly nicknamed her the 'border czar' while also accusing her of being uninterested in actually visit the US-Mexico border.
Since being named as the US' point person on the migrant crisis in March, Harris has visited the southwest border region just once, last June, when she spent a few hours in El Paso, Texas, before jetting off to her $5million Los Angeles mansion.
Meanwhile, illegal crossing at America's southwest border have surged since Biden took office. Recent data shows Border Patrol officers encountered more than 192,000 people attempting to cross the border in September 2021, as opposed to 57,674 and 52,546 in 2020 and 2019 respectively.
Vice President Kamala Harris (left) is traveling to Honduras for the inauguration of President-elect Xiomara Castro (right) in an effort to 'address the root causes' of illegal immigration. Analysts claim a productive relationship between the US and Honduras could be particularly useful diplomatically
The trip is part of Harris' effort to 'deepen the partnership' between the US and Honduras to combat corruption and migration, as well as advance economic growth (Pictured: Migrants seeking asylum in El Paso, Texas)
The vice president's upcoming trip will mark her second trip to a Northern Triangle country since she was tasked with tackling the border crisis.
It is unclear when Harris will depart for Honduras or how long she will be in the country. However, Castro's inauguration is slated for January 27.
Castro - the leftist opposition party candidate won out over the country's ruling party in November - allegedly shares common ground with the US government in areas of immigration, drug trafficking and corruption.
Analysts claim a productive relationship between the US and Honduras could be particularly useful diplomatically.
However, critics continue to slam the vice president for focusing her efforts in Central America instead of at the southwest border.
The White House announced the trip Tuesday, which marks the vice president's second trip to a Northern Triangle country since she was tasked with tackling the border crisis
'You can have her,' wrote Twitter user @JustMe73forAll. 'Kamala should just stay in Honduras. She's useless and completely unqualified in her position.'
'Kamala doesn't have time to comment on Southern border human trafficking, she's packing for Honduras,' @ska_texas said.
'Every day she does not go to the southern border is an absolute boon for the Republicans,' echoed @AllistarMick. 'Have at it Kamala!'
'Oh Kamala just go to the border and do your job PLEASE,' stated @love_gman.
User @Mas_hoc added: 'So Kamala is having difficulty defining herself....had she done her job as border Czar and stemmed the tide of illegal crossings, she would be in a much better place.
'She squandered the opportunity. Lightweight. Incompetent.'
The politician has also come under fire from other progressives after she declared publicly that undocumented migrants were not welcome in the US.
Meanwhile, critics continue to slam the vice president for focusing her efforts in Central America instead of at the border
Her trip to Honduras comes after disturbing images unveiled last week showed dire conditions at Arizona border patrol facilities as tens of thousands of migrants were packed together in overcrowded trailers and makeshift mylar tents.
Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls declared a state of emergency on December 9 after 6,000 people were taken into custody by Border Patrol in the course of five days. The behemoth figure equates to the number of migrants intercepted in an average month over the past two decades.
The surge and revelation of overcrowding also came amid a massive surge in infection rates for COVID-19 with the Omicron variant – leading to further questions on the holding conditions in the middle of the pandemic.
After receiving a barrage of criticism, Harris had a phone call with Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei during which she 'reaffirmed
