The actual number of illegal immigrants who make it across the southern border of the United States may simply be a question of a word definition, according to congressional Democrats and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
They say the border is secure, and encounters with individuals who have illegally crossed into the United States are down by almost 70 percent.
Republicans maintain the opposite is true, and Mr. Mayorkas is responsible for many crimes that can be traced to illegal immigrants who entered the United States under his watch.
Mr. Mayorkas told the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing on July 26 that border encounters have decreased since the end in May of Title 42—the Trump-era policy that allowed the deportation of some illegal immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the Biden administration had implemented policies to facilitate the asylum process, consider refugee claims, and streamline the parole and deportation processes.
“Under President Biden’s leadership, we have led the largest expansion to offer safe and orderly pathways for people who seek humanitarian relief under our laws,” Mr. Mayorkas said.
This includes expanded access to CBP One, an app to schedule an appointment at a border port of entry. Some illegal immigrants seeking asylum are reportedly fitted with a GPS ankle monitor so Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers can continuously track them.
According to Mr. Mayorkas, President Joe Biden’s policies that have deterred illegal immigration include a regulation under which most immigrants are presumed ineligible for asylum if they passed through other nations without seeking protection elsewhere first or failed to use legal pathways for U.S. entry.
Those people are ordered to leave the country, he said.
Mr. Mayorkas said his department also has made significant progress in the fight against drug trafficking.
“We seized nearly 2 million pounds of narcotics last fiscal year. Operations Blue Lotus and Four Horsemen alone stopped nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl,” he said.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said there is no basis for Republican criticism of Mr. Mayorkas’s work and that the southern border is secure despite their claims. He said the Republicans are motivated by bigotry and fear of what they call an “invasion” of immigrants. He said Mr. Mayorkas is working to secure the border.
“The Biden administration has deported or expelled over 2.5 million people in the last few years,” he said.
According to Mr. Nadler, the Republicans’ portrayal of the immigration issue had stoked fear and inspired racists to commit mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and other places. He said the movement to impeach Mr. Mayorkas is based solely on some Republicans’ desire to hurt the Biden administration.
Changing Definitions
Republicans countered that changing definitions and processes doesn’t suddenly make it acceptable to cross the border illegally. Rep Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said that millions of people are in the United States illegally, regardless of how Mr. Mayorkas defines their entry.He said that 2.1 million illegal immigrants were released into the United States, and 1.5 million were encountered but evaded border agents. Those numbers, according to Mr. McClintock, are the equivalent of the populations of Nebraska and Hawaii.
Mr. McClintock said that in 2019, 458,000 border encounters resulted in 267,000 removals. In 2022, encounters were shown to have risen to more than 2 million, although removals were down to 72,000.
“That’s five times as many. So, while encounters were up five times, removals were down 75 percent. How do you account for that?”
Censorship Accusations
“That’s why the numbers are dropping. Instead of bringing them to the southern border, you’re bringing them directly to ports of entry,” Mr. McClintock said.Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) had especially harsh questions for Mr. Mayorkas concerning the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
According to a June 26 report from the Judiciary Committee Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, CISA has been used to censor speech on social media that’s critical of the Biden administration in particular and Democrats in general.
Mr. Johnson said the report’s conclusions were supported by the courts in Missouri v. Biden.
Court Blocks CISA
Judge Doughty ordered government agencies such as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FBI to stop “threatening, pressuring, or coercing” social media companies to “remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”Mr. Johnson said Mr. Mayorkas had “done great harm” to Americans’ First Amendment rights by censoring social media. Mr. Mayorkas denied that his department engaged in censorship.
“The court found otherwise,” Mr. Johnson said. “It involves the most massive attack against free speech in our history.”
Mr. Mayorkas countered that CISA was only tasked with fighting “disinformation and misinformation from third-party states.” He denied that the program was meant to be used to muzzle dissent.
Mr. Johnson repeated that Judge Doughty had found otherwise. He added that in the U.S. Constitution, terms such as “disinformation” and “misinformation” are conspicuous by their absence.
“The founders did not trust the government to determine what is true.”
