Andy Biggs challenges claim that Trump ‘gutted’ DHS

Rep. Andy Biggs is challenging Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s claim that President Trump “gutted” the department — and particularly the claim that the department lacks enough people to process asylum cases.

The Arizona Republican, in a new letter Wednesday, said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has hired hundreds of new asylum officers and has the highest staffing ever.

He said that contradicts Mr. Mayorkas’s suggestion last week at the White House that the border surge was Mr. Trump’s fault.

“When I started 27 days ago, I learned that we did not have the facilities available or equipped to administer the humanitarian laws that our Congress passed years ago,” Mr. Mayorkas said. “We did not have the personnel, policies, procedures, or training to administer those laws. Quite frankly, the entire system was gutted.”

Mr. Biggs, in a letter to the acting director at USCIS, demanded the agency produce 10 years of staffing numbers to back up Mr. Mayorkas’s words.

The congressman also asked for the training materials for asylum officers, in order to test Mr. Mayorkas’s claims on that front.

“I look forward to reviewing the materials so that I can better understand Secretary Mayorkas’ statement and any gaps in USCIS resources,” he said.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, USCIS had 745 asylum officer positions authorized as of March 2019, and 546 of those were filled. That’s significantly more than the number of officers at the end of the Obama administration — where Mr. Mayorkas served as head of USCIS and, later, as deputy Homeland Security secretary.

Processing of cases is also much higher under Mr. Trump than it was when Mr. Mayorkas was at the department.

The GAO report said in 2016, the last full year under the Biden administration, USCIS handled about 8,400 credible-fear and reasonable-fear claims a month. In 2019, the GAO showed that had risen to about 9,400 a month.