Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas finally admitted that his department has lost control of the southern border.
During a hearing on Wednesday, Mayorkas was grilled by House Republicans, who have floated impeaching him over what they say is his negligence in securing the border.
“I know that today Secretary Mayorkas is going to try to paint a rosy picture of this disastrous mismanagement of our border,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the GOP chair of the Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement. “But the numbers don’t lie.”
Mayorkas, meanwhile, pushed back and defended the DHS for the “selfless” work they have done while facing unprecedented challenges both at the southern border and across the U.S.
“Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely — even within our fundamentally broken immigration system — is working,” the secretary said.
The U.S. has been seeing massive migrant numbers since President Joe Biden announced last year that he would be lifting “Title 42,” a controversial border policy implemented by former President Donald Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the border agency to turn migrants away.
Since then, nearly 2.4 million migrants were detained at the border for the fiscal year ending in September, surpassing the already-historic number of 1.7 million migrant detainees in 2021. The numbers are likely to increase now that “Title 42” has been lifted.
Republicans also focused on the importation of fentanyl and blamed Mayorkas for the rise in overdoses that have occurred in American communities over the past several years.
“The fentanyl killing thousands of Americans every year is a direct result of your dereliction,” said Colorado Rep. Ken Buck. “When people die of fentanyl poisoning, it is your fault.”
Mayorkas responded that the agency has stopped nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl and made more than 280 arrests since last year.
But Republican New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew insisted that the secretary is responsible for deaths from fentanyl despite those factors.
“In my mind, this makes your actions criminal,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., said. “Secretary Mayorkas, you must resign. Will you resign?”
Mayorkas said he would not, while Van Drew replied that it “leaves us with no other option: you should be impeached.”
