Mayorkas in El Paso: “Our Immigration System as a Whole Is Broken”

DHS Secretary Mayorkas, facing investigations and perhaps impeachment hearings when Republicans take control of the House in January, visited El Paso on Tuesday. His main excuse for the poor performance by his department in managing the U.S.-Mexico border is that the immigration system is broken. He spoke with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents as morale is at an all-time low and suicides of agents are at an historic high.

I suppose we can give Mayorkas credit for showing up in El Paso. It’s more than Sleepy Joe Biden has done. The border czar, Kamala Harris, visited El Paso once but hasn’t been seen since. Joe Biden told the press when he recently visited Arizona that he has other more important things to do than visit the southern border.

Nonetheless, the visit by Mayorkas produced little. He offered no specifics on how the administration plans to handle the increase in migrants crossing the border once Title 42 ends next week. Shouldn’t a revised plan already be in place by now, with only seven days left before Title 42 ends on December 21? It indicates there really is no plan to change anything.

El Paso is really being targeted by illegal migrants in recent days. Thousands of migrants have crossed the border, some escorted by Mexican police. Officials in El Paso are so overwhelmed and their facilities to handle illegal immigrants are so overcrowded that they are simply releasing the migrants into the streets of the city. You can imagine how the residents of El Paso feel about the situation.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mayorkas was in El Paso and assessing the operations while speaking to the workers who patrol the border.

As far as what has been going on at the border, Jean-Pierre said CBP has deployed more agents to support mobile processing units along the border.

She also stressed how important the border crisis was to the president, saying from day one, he put forth a comprehensive immigration reform bill because “he understands how important this is.”

There is no indication the president “understands how important this is.” He flat-out said he has more important things to do than see the border crisis his decisions has created. Mayorkas spoke for about 15 minutes with reporters for KTEP public radio, El Paso Matters and the El Paso Times to talk about the ongoing challenges and the end of Title 42. His message was that the immigration and asylum systems are broken. For example, Mayorkas was asked, “Do you expect there to be any new limits on asylum for migrants whether that’s by nationality or a different process in place other than arriving at the border?” There have been limits placed on Venezuelans, specifically, who are being immediately expelled back across the border to wait for their asylum requests to be processed. It’s much like the previous administration’s Remain in Mexico program.

So we believe in the asylum system, we’ve worked very, very hard to reconstruct it after it was dismantled by the prior administration. There are a lot of discussions about different ideas and how to address the number of encounters that we’re experiencing at the border. No decisions have been made. But one of the things that we’re very devoted to and we’ve been devoted to since the very outset of this administration is not only rebuilding our asylum system, rebuilding our refugee processes, rebuilding much of legal immigration, but also building lawful, safe, orderly humane pathways. So individuals who are desperate do not feel that they must place their lives, their life savings, in the hands of smugglers who only exploit them for profit.

This is what Mayorkas does every time he is asked about whatever plans DHS has to secure the border. The best he comes up with is an outline that he promoted in April. Since then, nothing. There is no plan that has come from that outline, nothing specific he can point to that is being done to help cities like El Paso when several thousand migrants arrive in one weekend and overwhelm its resources.

Mayorkas says that the migrants just want to ask for asylum. That, however, ignores the increasing number of gotaways that the Border Patrol sees every day. In FY 2022, CBP reported 599,000 known gotaways. Gotaways run from Border Patrol agents, they don’t turn themselves in as other migrants do. And, as far as migrants putting their lives in danger, that already happens. Migrants drown in the Rio Grande River, they suffer abuse from drug cartels and human traffickers, and girls and women are raped. Our demented president thinks an open border is an act of humanitarianism but it is not. It invites drug cartels and human traffickers who take over parts of the border and exploit migrants.

Claudia Rodriguez, a member of the El Paso City Council, was interviewed on FNC this morning. She said that the El Paso City Council has called for a state of emergency but the (Democrat) mayor refuses to make such a declaration. The Biden administration has not upheld its part of an agreement with the city to reimburse them for expenses the migrants cause. She said that El Paso “loaned” the federal government $8M but it has not been fully reimbursed. That isn’t really a surprise, right? The federal government moves at a snail’s pace.

El Paso is a Democrat-run city. El Paso voted for Joe Biden. In the last 24 hours, it is being reported that El Paso received 2,416 migrants. The White House is asking for $4B from Congress to deal with the border as Title 42 ends. Mayorkas offers no specifics to reporters or Border Patrol agents, though, so what is the extra four billion dollars to be used for?

The policy of the Biden administration is that there is no policy. It is a dereliction of duty. Joe Biden doesn’t care. It’s a lie every time someone says that border security is a priority for the administration. It clearly is not.

As the residents of El Paso are discovering, elections have consequences. Nothing will change as long as Biden is in the White House.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases