Ron DeSantis says Kamala Harris fears optics of visiting ‘disaster’ on the border

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Gov. Ron DeSantis said Vice President Kamala Harris won’t visit the Mexican border because “they realize it’s a disaster.”

“If she goes it’s going to highlight it even more,” he told Fox & Friends.

That means DeSantis will dispatch Florida police officers and sheriff’s deputies to the border before Harris, tasked with handling border issues, ever visits.

He called that a failure of leadership.

“All of us at the states now have to step up and do their job for them,” he said.

Florida on Wednesday became the first non-border state to commit to send law enforcement to the border to curb illegal immigration. He said he was answering a call from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. He compared responding to the need as similar to other states sending support when Florida gets struck by a hurricane.

Prompted by Fox’s anchor team, DeSantis pinned much of the blame on Harris, but said Biden is responsible for the failures, too. Harris, while running for president in 2019, criticized former President Donald Trump‘s policies sending children to detention centers in Homestead and elsewhere. DeSantis said she now is trying to abandon all Trump immigration policies, and the nation is paying the price.

“They were just using that to try and attack Donald Trump,” he said.

“If he did it, it must be bad,” he said. “They have to do the opposite.”

Florida’s Democratic lawmakers notably have a different take, and sent a letter to DeSantis this week demanding he reverse course on his border plans.

The letter from Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book said dispatching law enforcement to the border would “sacrifice the safety of our state for what appears to be political posturing.”

But DeSantis in the Fox News spot said the crisis was now leading to law enforcement issues in Florida. Specifically, he cited an increase in drug cartel activity.

‘Meth is all coming from across the Southern Border,” he said. “The Cartels are eating Biden and Harris’ lunch and she won’t even go down there.”