House Republicans launched a probe Thursday into Homeland Security’s move to shift some 1,400 department employees to the border last month, saying the department is risking national security by pulling air marshals and Secret Service agents from their regular duties to help process migrants.
Reps. Pete Sessions and Glenn Grothman, respectively the chairmen of the government operations and national security subcommittees of the Oversight and Reform Committee, also suggested some of the deployments may violate the law by pushing law enforcement agents to do things outside their job descriptions.
They fired off a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding details about who exactly has been sent to the border and why.
“The unprecedented crisis at the southwest border, caused by the Biden Administration’s policies, continues to further endanger our national security and all Americans,” Mr. Sessions, of Texas, and Mr. Grothman, of Wisconsin, wrote in their letter.
The administration has repeatedly tapped other government agencies to help immigration agencies overwhelmed at the border by the migrant surge that erupted when President Biden took office.
But the efforts intensified last month as the government prepared for the end of the Title 42 pandemic emergency power that allowed immigrants who are in the country illegally to be expelled.
Officials anticipated a massive surge in illegal immigration and conscripted employees from the Federal Air Marshal Service, the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to help out.
The surge of migrants didn’t materialize. Indeed, the number of migrants caught by Border Patrol agents dropped from 10,000 a day just before the end of Title 42 to 3,400 a day in the weeks after Title 42.
But the number of unauthorized migrants coming in through border crossings has shot up, officials acknowledged, creating some extra demand for processing.
The Washington Times has reached out to Homeland Security for comment on the letter, which demands documents detailing the decision to deploy the agents and immigration officers.
The Pentagon also sent 1,500 troops to the border.
The Republican chairmen said the decision to deploy the air marshals was legally “questionable” given that their duties were not to enforce the law but to transport and provide babysitting duties for migrants in custody.
The Air Marshal National Council, an advocacy group for marshals, said the redeployments come at a particularly troubling time, when violence on airplanes has risen.
David Londo, president of the council, said the deployments were “destroying the chances of stopping another 9/11.”
Other agencies have also been taxed.
The Washington Times reported last month on a large number of employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government’s legal immigration agency, who were pressed into border service to handle initial interviews for migrants who might seek asylum.
Hundreds of employees were pulled from their regular duties for mandatory weeklong training and told to prepare for border deployments.
Among them were officers who worked on terrorism task forces and on Homeland Security’s family reunification task force, a major priority for the Biden administration, tasked with reuniting children and parents separated by the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border policy.
The officers are being assigned to conduct what’s known as “credible fear interviews,” which is the first step for migrants at the border who may want to claim asylum.
USCIS first asked for volunteers but didn’t receive enough, so it conscripted employees into the border details.
One employee objected to the reassignment, saying he’d left the asylum division because of this kind of work.
“I strongly believe that credible fear applicants are being trafficked into the United States to work off their debt to their smugglers. Some of them are being trafficked as sex slaves,” that employee said.
“There is a reason why I left asylum, and that is one of the reasons. That is, I don’t want to work as a middleman for drug cartels and sex traffickers,” the employee said.
That refers to smugglers who charge migrants $10,000 or more to be shepherded to the border. Those who can’t pay upfront must work off their debts, sometimes by selling sex.
USCIS officials acknowledged their operations would suffer from the reassignments.
“We’re going to have to take a hit on other priorities in order to do this, but the department has made very clear that this is a priority,” John Lafferty, head of USCIS’ asylum division, told employees. “The administration, the White House, has made clear this is a priority.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the role of the Air Marshal National Council as an advocacy group.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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