Pictured are Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and first Black vice president of America, and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH)

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By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Vice President Kamala Harris, America's first woman and first Black vice president, visited the Mexico-U.S. border nearly two weeks ago, her first trip to the border and one that follows heightened criticism that the vice president was avoiding such a trip in spite of a surge in illegal border crossings and drug trafficking on the southern border and even after her return last month from her first foreign trip as vice president, a three-day visit to Guatemala and Mexico.

While the vice president made three stops in El Paso, Texas during her first trip to the Mexico-U.S. border, she did not visit the border wall. She did, however, tour border facilities with border control officials and she met with activists for undocumented immigrants, her return home in Air Force 2 met by a wealth of media whose questions she essentially sidestepped after a polite greeting session.

A daughter of immigrants, Harris has said that inhumane conditions furthered by the Trump administration when former president Donald Trump was in office continue to plague the border.

The Biden administration, which remains under scrutiny regarding America's border problem, has conferred with governors across the state to seek help in taming the border situation, some of the governors, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican up for reelection next year and a former U.S. senator, sending state highway troopers to help patrol the southern border. DeWine has sent 14 of Ohio's state troopers to the southern border, saying Texas authorities lobbied him to send them to do surveillance, activity that sources say raises questions about the governor's priorities and his use or misuse of state troopers abroad while crime skyrockets in major American cities in Ohio like Columbus and Cleveland.

Just last month Cleveland's mayor, Mayor Frank Jackson, the city's four-term Black mayor, joined 27 other big city mayors, in sending a letter to current President Biden, who ousted Trump in November following a contentious presidential election, asking him to help quell violent crime in their cities.

“We write to congratulate you and your administration on the steps you have already taken to address the scourge of gun violence we face in cities across America,” the letter, the June 15 letter states in part. “We believe there are other steps that the federal government is uniquely qualified to take to enhance the efforts already underway.”

In spite of some criticism for not effectively using the state troopers to address crime in his own state, DeWine, a progressive governor, said that he was pleased to send state troopers from Ohio to help during the crisis at the U.S. border. and that he was sending the troops for two weeks. On the other hand, activists said that the fewer state troopers in the inner city of places like Cleveland the fewer conflicts between Black people and law enforcement.

Harris, 56 and a Democrat, had initially said that she would visit the border in due time and that there is no quick fix to the influx of Central American migrants to the U.S. But pressure mounted, mainly from Congressional Republicans, wanted more answers as pressure mounted for the Biden administration to do more on the U.S.-Mexico border fiasco. The vice president said that the average immigrant flees to the U.S. for a better way of life.

According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, border agents detained some 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February alone, with nearly a 70 percent increase in that amount in April and the numbers not getting significantly better in either May or June, the highest monthly totals since a major border surge in mid-2019. The numbers just keep getting worse, critics say, the worst U.S. figures in some 20 years.

Republicans say the Biden administration has watered down immigration policies in place under the Trump administration while Democrats argue that Trump's immigration policies were racist and anti-Democratic, and that they marginalized women, children, and people of color.

Former president Mike Pence, whom Harris succeeded into office this year, visited the border in 2019 and he criticized Harris last month for not visiting the border sooner, Harris saying that both Trump and Biden perpetuated border problems and fed off of harassing immigrants at the border.

Harris ran for president last year, and later vice president on the Democratic ticket. She is the first woman of color to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America.

On the campaign trail for her unsuccessful bid for president she had a tone amenable to  the nation's immigrant community as she pushed immigration reform policies. Biden later tapped her to run for vice president on his presidential ticket.

Clevelandurbannews.com and-Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.