Republicans challenged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday, telling him that he’s failed the American public, which no longer trusts him to manage the border.
On a day when Mr. Mayorkas was supposed to be facing the start of impeachment proceedings in the Senate, he instead appeared for two hearings where Republicans eviscerated him for the ongoing chaos at the border.
“It gives me no joy to say this but most Republicans don’t trust you and the vast majority of the American people don’t trust you. That’s why you’ve been impeached,” Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, told him.
He said Americans think Mr. Mayorkas and President Biden are allowing more illegal immigrants in because they skew the allocation of political power through the divvying up of legislative seats in the apportionment process. Even though they cannot vote, they are counted by the Census Bureau, and those counts are used to decide which states get more seats in Congress and more votes in the Electoral College.
“The only people I know who are better off in this country today than they were four years ago are illegal immigrants. And that’s a result of your policies,” Mr. Kennedy said, though he repeatedly added that his feelings weren’t personal. “I don’t hate anybody. I look for grace wherever I can find it. And I certainly don’t hate you.”
Mr. Mayorkas called Mr. Kennedy’s comments insulting.
“The notion, senator, that we intend to allow illegal immigration is nothing short of preposterous,” he said. “It is disrespectful to the extraordinarily hard work that we perform and far more importantly that the personnel in the Department of Homeland Security and across this administration perform to stem illegal immigration.”
He said the rate of illegal immigration has been coming down in recent weeks, with the Border Patrol now apprehending about 3,800 people a day. That’s far below the 10,000-per-day rate reached at points in December, which set new records for border chaos.
Still, during appearances in the House and Senate, Mr. Mayorkas did acknowledge a “crisis” at the border — something he and other top Biden officials had refused to do for most of the last three months.
Mr. Mayorkas testified on a day that he was supposed to face the start of impeachment proceedings in the Senate. The House had been scheduled to send over the two articles of impeachment Wednesday evening, but delayed that decision after it became clear Senate Democrats were going to use a parliamentary tactic to try to derail a trial.
Given the partisan breakdown in the Senate, it is unthinkable that Mr. Mayorkas would be convicted and removed even if a trial were to be held.
Republicans made their case anyway.
Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi pointed out that Mr. Mayorkas kicked off his testimony by complaining that his department was underfunded, yet Congress has given Homeland Security more money than Mr. Mayorkas requested.
On immigration detention beds in particular, he pointed to Mr. Mayorkas’ repeated requests to slash the number of beds below the levels Congress has allocated.
Rep. Michael Cloud, Texas Republican, challenged Mr. Mayorkas’ assertion that Congress is to blame for the chaos. He pointed out that the Biden administration has the same tools as the Trump administration, which used them to achieve the least amount of illegal crossings in decades.
Mr. Cloud asked Mr. Mayorkas four times whether Congress has stripped any of those authorities, and each time Mr. Mayorkas evaded.
“You can’t get a straight answer out of this guy,” said Rep. John Rutherford, Florida Republican.
For his part, Mr. Mayorkas complained that Congress was so late in getting the 2024 spending bill done that it’s now too late to complete the hiring surge he had planned to get more help for the border.
He also chided Congress for cutting money from a fund used to pay localities to house and feed newly arrived illegal immigrants as they spread across the country.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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