Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio demanded on Monday that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas provide "detailed data related to border security and immigration." This is information Mayorkas failed to provide at a hearing last week, despite being aware of the upcoming hearing, and what the House sought to learn from him, for nearly two weeks.
Jordan had also spoken directly to Mayorkas, and told him what questions he wanted to be answered, in advance of the hearing. Still, Mayorkas did not provide those answers, and appeared thoroughly unprepared to do so.
"As the Secretary of Homeland Security," Jordan wrote to Mayorkas, "one of your top priorities is to 'protect Americans from terrorism and other homeland security threats.'" Yet during the hearing before the House last week, Mayorkas could not answer Jordan's question about how many of the 42 individuals on the terrorist watchlist or No-Fly list had been released into the US, a question Jordan posed prior to the hearing.
Mayorkas also could not answer when some 1.2 million illegal immigrants, who have already received a final removal order, would be deported, instead saying that DHS, which just launched a new "Disinformation Governance Board," does not have adequate resources to do so. DHS has an annual budget of $52 billion.
Jordan expressed his concern to Mayorkas that since the beginning of President Biden's term in office, the administration "has released more than 836,000 aliens into the interior of the United States."
The administration has been roundly criticized for encountering illegal migrants, processing them, putting them on planes and buses, and sending them off around the country with barely any oversight. The administration has given these migrants free phones and has stated the intention to track them through these voluntarily carried devices.
"Rep. Gaetz asked you," Jordan wrote to Mayorkas, "if any of those aliens would commit a crime." Mayorkas said that undoubtedly they would, and that some criminals had been deported, while more illegal immigrants are being released and barely tracked.
Just last week a Texas National Guardsman died while trying to rescue two drowning illegal immigrants from the Rio Grande River who later were found to be drug dealers. The US is currently experiencing record numbers of overdose deaths and a drug abuse epidemic.
"We therefore ask you again," Jordan wrote, "what the Department intends to do to identify and remove criminal aliens who are among the 836,000 aliens you have released into the United States.
Republican representatives also wanted a breakdown of illegal migrants sent by DHS to the 50 states. Mayorkas has not yet given that information, either.
Mayorkas has claimed to comply with federal immigration law as regards asylum seekers, but, Jordan noted, "you refuse to comply with the immigration laws you do not like." That includes Mayorkas' unwillingness to deport the 1.2 million illegal immigrants who have been found by a court to be in violation and must be removed from the county. Jordan demands that Mayorkas fully explain his "complete disregard for the law."
Mayorkas has admitted in January that the border crisis is the worst it has been in 20 years. Shortly after Biden took office, Mayorkas delivered words to migrants who intended to make the journey illegally across the US border, saying:
"All I can do is communicate, both to the American public and to the individuals who are seeking protection that we are working around the clock, seven days a week, to make that time frame as short as possible, but they need to wait," said Mayorkas to reporters in the White House press briefing room. "But they need to wait with a particular goal in mind."
"We are not saying don't come, we are saying don't come now, because we will be able to deliver a safe and orderly process to them as quickly as possible," Mayorkas added. This signaled to migrants that they should definitely come.
"The American people deserve a Secretary of Homeland Security who will actually protect the homeland from terrorism, secure our border, and enforce our immigration laws. More importantly, they deserve accountability for the Biden Administration’s flagrant disregard of our immigration laws in furtherance of its radical, open-border agenda. In light of your inability to answer these questions and provide this information at last week’s hearing, we ask that you submit it to the Committee promptly," Jordan concludes.
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