Mexico-based drug cartels—and not the government of the United States—“control everything that crosses that southwest border,” including “illegal migrant crossings” that “create gaps in border security,” according to former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott.
“When I say gaps in border security, I mean they overwhelm all of our law enforcement in the area beyond the Border Patrol, and that creates gaps where there is no law enforcement, and then they bring into the country anything they want,” Scott said during a May 23 hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.
Earlier in the hearing, Scott told the subcommittee members that he led the Border Patrol during much of the Trump administration and into Biden’s tenure.
“As chief, I was the most senior official responsible for border security between the ports of entry. I personally witnessed the unprecedented seismic shift in border security and immigration policy that was initiated by the Biden administration on January 20, 2021,” Scott said.
“As political leadership consistently ignored the guidance of career professionals and increasingly made policy decisions that resulted in aliens being released into the U.S., the volume of illegal immigration predictably increased dramatically. I observed and experienced the rapid degradation of our border security from order back to total chaos firsthand.
“I watched the border security gains that were made over three decades dismantled and the economies and safety of border communities in the U.S. and Mexico spiral backward. It is my professional assessment that this highly publicized policy shift created the current border crisis and effectively transferred control of our southwest border into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.”
Throughout most of the hearing, the Republican majority on the panel displayed a large photo of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with his frequently repeated statements that “the border is secure” and “we screen and vet individuals we encounter.”
The statement about screening illegal immigrants detained at the border by the Border Patrol reflected the presence of witness Tammy Nobles, the mother of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton. Hamilton was murdered last year, allegedly by a 16-year-old MS-13 gang member, an “unaccompanied alien child” who was illegally present in the country and living in a trailer park in Frederick, Maryland.
The El Salvadoran native is now in police custody in Maryland, charged with murder. Nobles told the subcommittee that when the young man was arrested, “he smirked and smiled.”
A sobbing Nobles said that her daughter would still be alive if federal officials had actually vetted the accused murderer when he crossed into the United States at Brownsville, Texas.
“The United States Government has to secure our border. We need to properly vet all border crossers. The government could have placed a phone call to authorities in El Salvador and found out that he was a gang member. But they didn’t,” Nobles said.
“If we had stricter border policies, my daughter would still be alive today. Nothing will bring my daughter back nor fix the pain of not having her here, but I want to prevent this from happening to someone else’s child. This isn’t about immigration; this is about protecting everyone in the United States.”
Democrats on the subcommittee, however, defended Biden’s policies.
“It appears today is ‘Groundhog Day,’ as today is part three of the Republicans’ assault on immigrants and immigration, and I am sure we will have many more parts to come,” ranking member Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said of the hearing,
Her reference to “Groundhog Day” was to a popular 1993 movie of that name, in which the main character is trapped in a time loop that forces him to repeatedly relive Feb. 2.
Jayapal accused Republicans of “not being serious about governing and finding solutions to the complex issues of immigration.”
“After passing their extreme, cruel, and unworkable border bill, where the only bipartisan thing about it was the opposition, Republicans have spent the last few weeks fear-mongering over the end of Title 42,” she said.
“This fear-mongering about the border, let me be clear, empowers the smugglers and the cartels when our Republican colleagues claim that the border is open. That is the most important information that they use to continue their activities. This turns into disinformation and misinformation that is shared by the smugglers, shared by social media, and stoked by relentless shouts from right-wing media about ‘open borders,’ all of which fuel migration patterns.”
But Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told the hearing that he’s “stunned that 6 million people have entered the country illegally over the last two years.”
“I am stunned to know that of 31,000–32,000 people, 21,000 of them were released into the country over a 72- to 96-hour period. I’m stunned because we don’t have control of our border,” he said.
Biggs then asked Scott if he thought Mayorkas has “taken the actions necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control of our borders.”
Scott replied: “Absolutely not, sir. If you listen to the words he states every time, it’s about creating safe pathways. When I was [Border Patrol] Chief, we were not allowed to even discuss consequences or actually securing the border, it was all about expediting the processing and avoiding the optics of people being backed up at the Border Patrol stations.”
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