Mark Meadows to Newsmax: VP Harris 'the Great Pretender' 00:00 / 08:21

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Newsmax on Friday night that Vice President Kamala Harris' trip to the southern border was just ''pretend'' when it came to having a plan to deal with the recent immigration crisis.

''But candidly, what we're finding is, is that Kamala Harris, [Democrats] should be playing the tune 'The Great Pretender' because she pretends she cares, she pretends she's got a plan, and she pretends she was going to go down there without having [former President] Donald Trump pushing her to go,'' Meadows told Friday's "Cortes & Pellegrino."

''It's time that we call it like we see it, and obviously the best part of the trip was the fact that she's getting back on the plane, and hopefully going back to get something done.''

Harris spent the day in El Paso, Texas, touring a Customs and Border Patrol processing center after being criticized in recent weeks for not going to see the problem for herself, more than three months after President Joe Biden said she would lead the administration's response to the situation.''As you know, we inherited a tough situation,'' Harris said Friday. ''In fact, right here in El Paso, was the launch of the child separation policy. You saw it as it rolled out on the ground in real time. We have looked at a system where people have been housed and inhumane conditions, over the last many years, an asylum system that has been broken and that needs to be reconstructed. In five months, we have made progress, but there's still much more work to be done.''

Meadows said Harris picked the wrong part of the state to truly assess the crisis.

''This is like going to look at hurricane damage and saying you're going to go to the coast of Florida and end up going to Washington, D.C.,'' Meadows said. ''You are 1,000 miles away from where the real problem was down in McAllen, Texas.''

Some areas around the border — like the Laredo, Texas sector — have reported a 1,000% increase in arrests of criminals coming across the border illegally.

After meeting with several young girls, Harris said the visit reinforces the administration's view that the corruption, crime and poverty in the immigrants' home countries were causing the surge rather than ending the more restrictive policies during the Trump administration.

''She kept saying, 'I want to look and find the root cause.' Well give me a mirror for her and Joe Biden,'' Meadows said. ''If they look in the mirror, there is the root cause. We didn't have this problem under Donald Trump.''