Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined the growing criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris's upcoming trip to El Paso because that location, while it has seen its fair share of the border crisis, it is not among the areas that have been hardest hit with the huge surge in illegal border crossings.
Patrick told Fox News host Harris Faulkner that the trip is basically a "softball" for VP Harris.
"To put this in perspective for your viewers who live anywhere but Texas, this would be — when she goes to El Paso, the distance from El Paso to Del Rio, that's really a hot spot now, is the distance from Boston to Washington, D.C.," Patrick said.
"The distance from El Paso to McAllen would be the distance from about Boston to about Charlotte. So imagine you had a problem break out in Washington, D.C., and she wanted to get to the hot spot and landed in Boston. She wouldn't be in the right spot or in Charlotte. So she's going to the wrong area," he continued.
"She's going where she is not really going to be seeing active crossings," Patrick added. "I don’t think they want them crossing behind her in a camera shot."
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) similarly called out Harris for going to El Paso because it is a "check in the box" trip since El Paso is not a hotspot compared to other areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"I'm sure her planners told her if you gotta go down to the border, go to something that is safer to go to, that is politically safer. 'If you go down to the lower Rio Grande where the high activity and you're there with kids and families, prosecutorial discretion where people are being released. High numbers of people crossing the border, you know, politically it’s harder to do that.'"