washington – The secretary of the Department of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas said as his time at the helm of the nation’s immigration enforcement comes to an end that “a really great solution was killed by irresponsible politics” when the bipartisan border deal fell apart earlier in year
Mayorkas noted agreement on a border package reached by a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators in February after months of deliberations that would have marked the first comprehensive overhaul of border security policy in decades, and would have given the president broad powers to crack down on illegal border crossings legal But the bill was quickly rejected by Republicans after President-elect Donald Trump voiced his opposition.
After the legislation’s failure, the Biden administration instituted asylum restrictions that drastically cut the flow of immigration. Asked about the timing amid criticism from Republicans that the Biden administration had the authority without Congress to act on the border, Mayorkas acknowledged that the administration could have taken action more quickly had they known that the border agreement would be torpedoed.
“Looking back, in 2020 if we had known that irresponsible politics would have killed what was clearly a worthy effort and a worthy outcome, we might have taken executive action more quickly,” Mayorkas said in an interview that aired on ” Face the nation with Margaret Brennan.”
The comments come as the border crossings have fallen to the lowest level of the Biden administrationafter hitting record highs a year ago.
The Homeland Security secretary noted that before Biden took office, “migration trend lines” were rising exponentially in 2018 and 2019 around the world, “and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.” He added that over time, the Biden administration has built capabilities that have allowed it to transport people and decompress areas that saw increases in immigration, saying that “we’ve been executing enforcement at an unprecedented level throughout this administration”.
“We’re now removing or returning more people in three years than the previous administration did in four, and we’re doing it not only in greater volume, but faster, because of negotiations with other countries and with more countries than ever before. It’s been the case,” Mayorkas said.