Harris spoke to reporters on Wednesday while participating in a virtual roundtable with experts who offered recommendations on the region, focusing on the core causes of migration in the Northern Triangle.

‘Our focus is to deal with the root causes, and I am looking forward to traveling, hopefully as my first trip, to the Northern Triangle, stopping in Mexico and then going to Guatemala,’ Harris said.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Ricardo Zuniga, a U.S. special envoy to Central America, said the recent increase in migrant arrivals was part of a ‘recurring pattern’ driven by crime and poor economic conditions in the Northern Triangle.

Zuniga said the Biden administration is working to help social welfare agencies in the region to identify unaccompanied children traveling with U.S.-bound caravans and other groups to stop them from taking the ‘dangerous journey’ north.

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