Plane Carrying Kamala Harris Forced to Turn Back Over 'Technical Issue'
Vice President Kamala Harris’s first foreign policy trip abroad was cut short Sunday when the plane Harris was riding on turned back.
Harris was in the air bound for Guatemala for about 25 minutes before the plane returned to Joint Base Andrews
CNN quoted the print pool reporter flying with Harris as reporting that “there was an unusual noise that came from the landing gear when we took off but the landing back at JBA was completely normal.”
“It is a technical issue. There are no major safety concerns,” Harris spokeswoman Symone Sanders said, according to CNN.
“I’m good, I’m good,” Harris said, CNN reported. “We all said a little prayer, but we’re good.”
Harris left aboard her initial plane at about 3 p.m. ET. She boarded her second plane at 4:19 p.m. and took off shortly therafter, CNN reported. She arrived safely in Guatemala City Sunday night, according to the New York Post.
Harris was designated by President Joe Biden as his lead for addressing what the Biden administration terms the “root causes” of illegal immigration — poverty, crime, and stagnant economies in the Northern Triangle nations of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
In a March 12 post for the Council on Foreign Relations, Will Freeman, who is seeking a Ph.D. in government from Princeton University, wrote that Biden is battling entrenched regional history.
“The Joe Biden administration has prioritized addressing poor governance, a root cause of migration from the region. Yet the challenge is bigger than getting anti-corruption efforts off the ground. It’s making them stick. If they don’t, much of President Biden’s proposed $4 billion in assistance to the Northern Triangle could go to waste,” he wrote.
Biden has been there. In 2015, he was the point man for former President Barack Obama’s effort to pump millions into the Northern Triangle to end illegal immigration.
“Let me be frank: Some in my own government and in the U.S. Congress have asked me, ‘How do we know this isn’t just going to be business as usual? How is this any different than anything that’s come before?'” Biden said in 2015, according to NPR. “Well, the president and I believe that this is the time that it will be different.”
NPR then noted, “But it wasn’t different. The leaders have changed, but the problems in the region persist.”
José Cárdenas, who served in the George W. Bush administration with the U.S. Agency for International Development, said there is a historic gap between actions and words.
“The problem, year after year, is that entrenched interests in these countries are not interested in economic reform,” Cárdenas told NPR for that 2015 report. “They will tell the Yankees everything that they want to hear, but when the Yankees leave, it’s back to business as usual.”
Biden has indicated he would be willing to put up to $4 billion on the table to help the three nations.
Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Jason Smith of Missouri last month expressed their opposition to the plan in a letter to acting Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, according to Fox News.
“In the midst of a border crisis propelled by the Biden administration reversing successful deterrent policies, it is worrisome that the administration’s solution isn’t to reinstate those policies or replace them with workable solutions, but instead to funnel more money to pay countries to dissuade their citizens to break U.S. laws, particularly countries with corruption concerns,” the letter stated.
“The strategy of sending cash payments to foreign countries to stem the tide of illegal immigration caused by Biden administration policies is naive and misguided,” the letter continued. “Moreover, the countries identified as potential recipients include some of the most corrupt countries in the world, with El Salvador and Guatemala ranking in the top ten.”
Comer and Smith wrote that former President Donald Trump had the right approach.
In an interview with Fox, Comer said Biden should take a lesson from that.
“President Biden should reinstate President Trump’s cooperative asylum agreements with Northern Triangle countries, utilize the Migrant Protection Protocols, end catch and release, and maximize his authority to expel illegal immigrants during the pandemic,” Comer said, according to Fox.
“Paying people to not commit a crime sends the wrong message, harms hardworking American taxpayers, and does nothing to end the border crisis.”
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