Mayorkas Tells Lawmakers Border is Secure
DHS secretary grilled by House Judiciary GOP
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By Robert Law on May 2, 2022
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week for an oversight hearing and it was a doozy. The embattled secretary had to expect the hearing would be contentious in light of the letter he received days before signed by 133 House GOP members, including leadership, that Andrew Arthur described as “ripping [Mayorkas’] handling of the Southwest border”. For those expecting fireworks between the GOP minority and Biden’s top immigration deputy, the hearing did not disappoint.
Border Crisis. Predictably, Republicans aimed most of their questions at the crisis on the southern border. In his opening remarks, Ranking Member Jim Jordan quoted Mayorkas from last year telling supporters that, “The border is secure and we’re executing our plan.” Jordan then contrasted that statement with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) own data showing over 200,000 "encounters" in March, a 22-year high, as well as already 1.06 million encounters thus far in fiscal year 2022.
Democrats, notably Chairman Jerry Nadler, came to Mayorkas’s defense by claiming that the border numbers are high because of recidivism from those quickly turned away under Title 42’s public health emergency authority. While it is true that the encounters data includes some individual aliens apprehended multiple times, that has always been the case with the monthly figures. There is simply no amount of double-or-triple counting of an alien that could add up to the border figures that set monthly records pretty much every month of the Biden administration.
https://cis.org/Law/Mayorkas-Tells-Lawmakers-Border-Secure
