Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will face Congress on Tuesday with a host of pressing questions about terrorism and border security — but one senator also plans to challenge him on his use of a private email to conduct government business.
Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican, has been pressing Mr. Mayorkas about his email practices for months and has grown frustrated with the lack of responses. With the secretary appearing in person, Mr. Marshall is determined to get answers, according to his planned questions, shared exclusively with The Washington Times.
“The sheer volume of communications on your private email and cell phone raises serious concerns about whether all official messages sent to or from these devices were properly forwarded back to your official DHS accounts. The volume of messages also calls into question your insistence that anything you have ever received in your personal email address was sent ‘errantly,’” Mr. Marshall will say.
Homeland Security, in a statement to The Times, said Mr. Mayorkas is following the rules and does his official business on his official account.
“If someone mistakenly contacts him via his personal email about official business, the secretary follows DHS policy and forwards it to his official account, so that the record is properly maintained and the communication continues through official channels,” the department said.
Mr. Mayorkas last appeared before Congress in July, when the border was slightly less chaotic and before the Hamas attack on Israel raised new terrorism fears.
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On Tuesday he is scheduled to testify alongside FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They have been called to talk about threats to the U.S., though senators can ask a wide range of questions.
The testimony will be Mr. Mayorkas’ first appearance since Homeland Security revealed the final border numbers for fiscal 2023, which were by far the worst in history in terms of unauthorized migrants, fentanyl smuggling and terrorism suspects detected.
Mr. Mayorkas, in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Monday, blamed the broken border on Congress and will demand more money to try to patch the holes he can.
“Too many elected officials believe that making cable TV appearances to decry a broken system is better for their politics than equipping our nation’s front-line officers with the resources they need to carry out their difficult jobs,” Mr. Mayorkas wrote.
He’s likely to be challenged on that assertion, with Republicans pointing to the difference between the border under former President Trump and under President Biden.
Customs and Border Protection recorded 3.2 million encounters with inadmissible migrants in fiscal 2023, or five times the number in 2020, the last full year under Mr. Trump.
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Border Patrol agents detected 169 people on the southern border last year whose identities drew hits on the terrorism watch list. By contrast, Mr. Trump saw just 11 over all four years of his administration.
Mr. Marshall plans to delve into terrorism, with questions about what happened to the 169 suspects that were detected. He will also probe how many might have gotten through undetected.
“Because of this administration’s disastrous open-border immigration policies, you have no idea how many dangerous terrorists are now in our country, do you?” Mr. Marshall plans to say.
On the emails, Mr. Marshall is pursuing questions that have been raised in recent months about Mr. Mayorkas’ adherence to open-records rules.
Government officials are supposed to conduct business on their official accounts, and if someone attempts to do business through their private account, then they are to forward it to their official account so it can be checked during records requests from Congress or the public.
Americans for Prosperity obtained some of Mayorkas’ emails and said it found other department officials seemed to intentionally use his personal address to conduct some business.
Mr. Marshall sent a letter in July prodding the secretary to be forthcoming about his email practices.
“You must have been too busy facilitating mass illegal immigration into this country because you never bothered to respond,” the senator plans to say.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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