By The FirstDHS Boss Alejandro Mayorkas spoke at a security forum this week where he falsely insisted the US-Mexico border is completely “secure.”
“Look, the border is secure,” Mayorkas claimed. “We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.”
“I have said to a number of legislators who expressed to me that we need to address the challenge at the border before they pass legislation and I take issue with the math of holding the solution hostage until the problem is resolved,” he said.
From Fox News:
His remarks come after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced last weekthat there were 207,000 migrant encounters at the border in June, compared to just over 189,000 in June last year. The June report shows there were 105,161 migrants removed from the U.S. last month, including 92,273 expelled under CDC’s Title 42 order – 79,652 migrants were released into the US.
With June’s numbers, there have now been 1,746,119 total encounters at the southern border in the 2022 fiscal year – outpacing the 1,734,686 encounters set in the FY21, and with still three months remaining in FY’22.
Republicans have zeroed in on the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis, blaming its rolling back of Trump-era border policy like the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which requires migrants be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration hearings. The administration has also narrowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) priorities, stopped border wall construction and implemented an asylum rule to expedite the length of hearings.
The administration has pushed back on those claims by Republicans, blaming instead the closing off of legal asylum pathways by the Trump administration and also pointing to “root causes” like poverty, violence and corruption in Central America. It is also seeking to end Title 42 expulsions, which have been used to expel a majority of migrants since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. arguing that a shift to traditional expulsions will lower repeat encounters and dissuade migrants. So far the administration has been blocked by a federal court from ending Title 42.
