‘Essentially, the Border Was Closed’ for Biden’s First Two Years

During Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to a question about why he had not taken the same executive action on the border as President Joe Biden recently took, arguing that “effectively the border was closed until May of last year.”

BBC US correspondent and MSNBC contributor Katie Kaye asked: “Secretary, the influx of people crossing the border is causing a huge political problem for the president. If this executive order is working as well as you say this morning, why didn’t he do it a year and a half ago and avoid the kind of pushback the Democrats have been facing at the border?”

Mayorkas responded: “So let’s go back and look at the timeline. On the first day of the president’s administration, he introduced a bill to Congress to fix our immigration system. Until last May, we had Title 42, a public health order, in place, which prohibited entry into the United States, with some exceptions. It gave the government the power to expel people from the United States, and essentially closed the border. Everyone expected chaos to break out when Title 42 was lifted. That didn’t happen. The president went to Congress and asked for additional funding, funding that was desperately needed by the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies that manage our immigration system. He asked Congress for that funding in August, and didn’t get it. He asked Congress again in October, and didn’t get it. Then we entered into very difficult, but ultimately successful, bipartisan negotiations for a legislative solution that was supposed to fix our system.” [has] It would have provided our immigration system with long-needed resources: 1,500 Border Patrol and Field Operations agents, 1,200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, 4,300 asylum officers, and over 100 immigration judges. It was a bipartisan, pragmatic solution that involved difficult compromises, but those compromises paid off. Congress didn’t act. The President did.”