WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced a barrage of criticism Wednesday from House Republicans who, in recent months, have floated impeaching him over what they say is his dereliction of duty in securing the southern border.
Mayorkas’ appearance before the House Judiciary Committee comes as the Biden administration’s immigration policies are facing legal attacks from across the political spectrum, despite a steep drop last month in the number of border crossings.
“I know that today Secretary Mayorkas is going to try to paint a rosy picture of this disastrous mismanagement of our border,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement. “But the numbers don’t lie.”
Jordan and other Republicans attributed the sudden falloff in migrant crossing to a new Biden administration asylum policy that allows migrants to use a Customs and Border Patrol app when seeking asylum. The new technology is attempting to streamline the asylum process by allowing more people — on average 1,400 a day — to get an appointment through the app before appearing at a U.S. port of entry with an asylum claim.
“That’s why the numbers are dropping,” said Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of California.
Mayorkas pushed back on the GOP line of questioning and defended his department, which employs more than 260,000 people, for the “selfless” work they have done while facing unprecedented challenges both at the southern border and across the country.
“Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely — even within our fundamentally broken immigration system — is working,” Mayorkas said.
The secretary said illegal border crossings have been falling since the peak that came before Title 42, a public health law allowing curbs on migration in the name of protecting public health. The policy was instituted under former President Donald Trump in March 2020 as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration ended Title 42 in May.
Since then, total encounters along the southern border — meaning migrants who either came to one of the ports of entry or tried to cross between them — were down 30 percent in June compared with the previous month. DHS said it was the lowest monthly total since February 2021.
But Republicans zeroed in on the influx of fentanyl into the country, blaming Mayorkas for the number of overdoses that have happened across American communities in the past several years.
