5.9k Share this
Texas Congressman Chip Roy continued the Republican grilling of US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding the immigration crisis on Thursday.
Mayorkas defended the administration’s handling of immigration Wednesday and Thursday amid a huge surge at the Mexico border that is expected to intensify as pandemic-related entry curbs are dropped.
President Joe Biden‘s administration has revealed it plans to end Title 42, a measure allowing the quick expulsion of migrants during the Covid-19 crisis, on May 23 — in an announcement that sparked cross-party anger.
Roy, holding up photographs of dead migrants, confronted Mayorkas regarding the administration’s policies.
‘Mr. Secretary, do you know what this is? This is a mobile morgue, a body trailer needed by counties in south Texas overwhelmed by dead migrants,’ Roy said to Mayorkas. ‘That particular trailer is filled with these bodies. Twenty-seven bodies that were stored in this mobile morgue in south Texas with dead bodies of migrants.’
Texas Congressman Chip Roy continued the Republican grilling of US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding the immigration crisis on Thursday, holding up pictures of dead migrants
Roy held up pictures of people affected by migration and the opioid crisis to nail home his point
U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) sits alongside signs as U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before the House Judicary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building
House Republicans sit alongside signs as U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testifies
Mayorkas defended the administration’s handling of immigration Wednesday and Thursday amid a huge surge at the Mexico border that is expected to intensify as pandemic-related entry curbs are dropped
March reached a new high of border crossings at the southern border with CBP encountering 221,303 migrants. Since Biden took office there has been more than 2.4 million encounters and the daily rate is set to triple when Title 42 ends next month
‘Dead bodies like this one found on a ranch just three weeks ago in south Texas, a dead migrant. Somehow that’s compassion,’ he added.
Roy believes that the Biden administration, including Mayorkas, have encouraged cartels and other migrants to cross the border, which he says is hurting his state and America.
‘You know it and you’re ignoring the actual truth!’
‘How about the dead bodies found by migrants? Compassion? How about the ranchers, who had to walk out of their door and this is what they faced, gentleman with rocks threatening a rancher in south Texas, only able to be saved when they are able to bring their dogs out to scare the people away in order to save themselves,’ he added.
He then connected the administration’s immigration policies to America’s opioid crisis and said the Biden White House’s lax enforcement of the border was responsible for thousands of drug deaths.
‘Mr. Secretary, do you know what this is? This is a mobile morgue, a body trailer needed by counties in south Texas overwhelmed by dead migrants,’ Roy said to Mayorkas. ‘That particular trailer is filled with these bodies. Twenty-seven bodies that were stored in this mobile morgue in south Texas with dead bodies of migrants’
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, pose with students from the Kincaid School on the House steps on Wednesday, April 27
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before the House Committee on Appropriations I Subcommittee Homeland Security Committee during a hearing on Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Request
‘How about the lost voices for people dying from fentanyl, the tens of thousands of Americans dying from fentanyl? Faces, faces of Americans, faces of Americans across this country dying because of fentanyl pouring into our country because of your policies that you know full well.’
Mayorkas responded: ‘Congressman, are you actually interested in the facts and the law?’ and tried to continue but Roy would not let him.
US Customs and Border Protection says it encountered 7,800 undocumented migrants a day along the southwest border in the past three weeks — almost five times the average of 1,600 recorded from 2014-2019, before the coronavirus outbreak.
‘We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain. It is not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows,’ Mayorkas told the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, urging Congress to pass long-term reforms.
Mayorkas’s testimony came with the administration locking horns with a federal court in Louisiana that granted a request by Republican-controlled states to temporarily halt their planning to wind down Title 42.
The order prevents the government from taking any action before a hearing on May 13 to determine whether Title 42 can be lifted.
Mayorkas set out a blueprint to boost border personnel, target people smugglers, speed up processing and increase holding capacity — as he warned the worst was yet to come.
‘A significant increase in migrant encounters will strain our system even further and we will address this challenge successfully,’ he said.
‘It will take time, and we need the partnership of Congress, state and local officials, NGOs and communities to do so.’
Enacted at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 under then-president Donald Trump, Title 42 requires border agents to turn away anyone who crosses undocumented into the United States.
Representative Jim Jordan accused on Thursday the Biden administration of ‘deliberately’ and ‘intentionally’ causing the southern border crisis as Republicans tore into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for being ‘out of touch’ and a ‘traitor.’
The House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member said during his opening statement that Mayorkas will face questions on why he implemented policies that led to the chaos.
‘It’s intentional, it has to be,’ Jordan said at the top of his remarks to the body on Thursday morning.
‘The chaos on our southern border is not an accident,’ the Ohio Republican congressman continued. ‘It’s deliberate, it’s on purpose, it’s by design.’
‘President Biden on Day One said there’ll be a moratorium on deportations, he ended Remain in Mexico, he terminated agreements with Northern Triangle countries and he stopped building the wall,’ Jordan rattled off. ‘Those policies, done intentionally, have led to all kinds of bad outcomes.’
He said: ‘Americans want legal immigration. President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas want illegal immigration. They want illegal migrants to come, stay and never go home. Now, the secretary won’t say that. In fact, he says everything’s just fine. He said it yesterday in two congressional hearings. He said it last September. Quote, ‘The border is secure,’ he told us.’
Ohio Republican Representative Jim Jordan tore into DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a hearing on Thursday, claiming: ‘The chaos on our southern border is not an accident. It’s deliberate, it’s on purpose, it’s by design’
Mayorkas arrives Thursday, April 28 to testify before the Judiciary Committee for an Oversight of the Department of Homeland Security hearing as the border crisis rages on
Mayorkas appeared before the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday to justify the administration’s request for $97.3 billion for the department’s budget in Fiscal Year 2023.
He said the money would go toward investing in meeting the ‘the shifting field landscape’ at the border and on other national security fronts – like from domestic and foreign terrorism and cyber attacks.
During those hearings, Mayorkas was lambasted by Republicans after he said the administration is ‘effectively managing’ the situation at the southern border.
In March alone, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 221,303 migrants crossing the southern border. This figure is the highest in more than two-decades and the biggest spike since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
The previous high was in July 2021, when CBP encountered 213,593 migrants.
Colorado Republican Representative Ken Buck told Mayorkas during the Judiciary hearing on Wednesday: ‘My constituents want you impeached because they believe you’ve committed treason.’
‘They believe you’re a traitor. They compare you to Benedict Arnold. You know, no parent with the last name Arnold names their kid Benedict.’
Buck said that over the weekend ‘a lady approached me and asked me if you [Mayorkas] felt any shame for what you’ve done to this country.’
‘My question for you, Secretary Mayorkas, is very simple,’ he added. ‘Would you please answer that lady’s question? Are you ashamed for what you’ve done to this country?
‘My response to what you have just said – it is so profoundly offensive on so many different levels, in so many different regards. I won’t ask you for an apology,’ he said.
‘Don’t. I won’t,’ Buck shot back.
Representative Ken Buck (pictured left speaking with Matt Gaetz on Thursday) said during the hearing that Mayorkas is a ‘traitor’ who needs to be ‘impeached’ because he ‘committed treason’
A caravan of migrants from different nations walk through Chiapas, Mexico on Tuesday, April 26, 2022 en route to cross the border into the U.S.
‘I am incredibly proud of my service to this country,’ Mayorkas said during the back-and-forth with Buck. ‘It is more than 20 years of service in the civilian corps as a federal prosecutor and as a member of the Department of Homeland Security. That is my response.’
‘What do you say to the mothers of the children who have died from the fentanyl overdoses? What do you say to all the people out there who can’t get an education because of what you’ve done with immigration in this country? You’ve secured the homeland? It’s a farce,’ Buck concluded.
Source: Daily Mail
