Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday accused Congress of shirking responsibility for the growing migrant crisis and instead failing to advance border security policies.
Mr. Mayorkas, 64, who narrowly avoided impeachment by the House last week over the border dispute, acknowledged the ongoing crisis but stressed that the problem predates the Biden administration.
“Yes, it’s a crisis. And, well, we’re not responsible for the system breaking down, and we have a tremendous amount of things going on within the system. But fundamentally, the only people who can fix it are Congress. That’s it,” Mayorkas said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
For many years, Mr. Mayorkas both said publicly And he insisted before Congress that the border was “secure.” last week, president biden81, also a Democrat, downplayed him and conceded that “the border is not secure” before shifting the blame to his predecessor.
Mayorkas dodged questions Sunday about the discrepancy in his statements.
Last week, House Republicans’ efforts to impeach Mayorkas began in part because of Republican defections and because Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) drove from the hospital to Congress to vote against him while recovering from open surgery. It burst into flames. To the Democratic side.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) later acknowledged that “the equation can change when people show up at a time when they aren’t expected to be in the building during vote counting.”
Republicans have indicated they plan to try impeachment again.
Mayorkas responded to the Republican accusations against him, calling them “baseless allegations.” “That’s why I’m not distracted by them and focused on the work of the Department of Homeland Security.”
House Republicans say Mr. Mayorkas is presiding over the border crisis while “deliberately and systematically refusing to comply with the law,” and that the border is “secure” and that DHS “has operational control.” He accused him of lying to Congress and “betraying the public’s trust.” “of.
In addition to the failure to impeach Mayorkas, a sweeping bipartisan border security reform bill introduced in the Senate last week also failed.
The deal, which had been negotiated for about four months, was widely seen as a way to drum up Republican support for a broader additional agreement centered around aid to Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific allies.
The Senate is currently considering a proposed amendment worth about $95 billion, excluding border provisions.
“This system hasn’t been fixed in 30 years. A bipartisan group of senators. [has] It now gave us the tools and resources we needed…and Congress killed it before we could even read it,” Mayorkas lamented.
Congressional Republicans are pressuring Biden to take executive actions similar to his predecessor Donald Trump’s to alleviate the border crisis. For example, it would reinstate the “remain in Mexico” policy (an arrangement in which asylum seekers remain in Mexico during their trials). Go to America.
“We have already taken administrative action. We are continually considering what options are available to us, but they will always be challenged in court,” Mayorkas countered.
“Mexico has publicly stated that it will not allow Remain in Mexico to be implemented again,” he said.
At this time, there is a backlog of cases. More than 3 million people in exile Litigation in United States Courts.
Since Biden took office in January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has at least 7 million Encountered near the southern border.
Mr. Mayorkas also weighed in on Special Counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report handed down last week, in which he declined to indict the president on charges of possessing classified documents, but jurors found him They concluded that he was likely to be seen as a “well-intentioned old man with a poor memory.”
In his report, Ho documented numerous instances in which Biden lost his memory during interviews lasting more than five hours last year.
In his 388-page report, Mayorkas accused Xu of making “unfounded, unnecessary and inaccurate personal statements” about the president.
“The most difficult thing about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it, because he’s sharp, he’s probing, he’s detail-oriented,” Mayorkas countered.
Some Republicans, like Rep. Claudia Tenney, have taken note of the Hur report and suggested that Biden’s cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office, citing his incapacity.
Mr. Mayorkas, a member of the president’s cabinet, was asked whether such conversations had taken place.
“Absolutely not,” Mayorkas said.
