Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended his $108 billion 2025 budget request today in an appearance before the same House committee that recommended his impeachment.
Republican members of the House Homeland Security Committee grilled the secretary on April 16 concerning his proposal to slice $250 million from the Border Security Operations budget while setting up a “slush fund” of $4.7 billion to facilitate illegal immigration.
It was Mr. Mayorkas’s first appearance before the committee, coming just hours before the House was set to refer two articles of impeachment against him to the Senate.
House Republicans blame Mr. Mayorkas’s policies under the Biden administration for the crisis on the U.S. southern border. More than 9 million illegal immigrant encounters have occurred since President Joe Biden took office.
Republican committee members rebuked the secretary for slashing funding for ICE detention beds to almost half of what it was under the Trump administration.
“[The budget] fails to take seriously the crises threatening our national security interest, especially our wide open borders,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.)
“Your 2025 budget request, I think, undermines our country’s ability to handle national security.”
Mr. Green accused the secretary of “making false statements to the committee and the American people.”
He said Mr. Mayorkas demonstrated a “disregard for the Constitution” by guiding Department of Homeland Security employees “to violate laws passed by Congress” and ignoring provisions to bar those with criminal records from entering the country.
“In other words, you directed your own agents on the ground, on the border, to defy the laws of Congress to release violent criminals into our country,” said Michael McCaul, (R-Texas) chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Two articles of impeachment were advanced by the Republican-controlled House Homeland Security Committee.
The House voted Feb. 13 to impeach the secretary for “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and for the “breach of public trust.”
The House of Representatives impeachment team delivers the Articles of Impeachment of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate in Washington on April 16, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
Mr. Mayorkas told the committee that mass migration was occurring around the world due to complex issues, not because of President Biden’s policies.
Democrats on the committee came to the secretary’s defense.
Ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called the impeachment a “sham from the start.”
“This is what happens when Republicans prioritize the whims of extreme MAGA members over politics that serve the American people,” he said.
Troy Carter (D-La.), ranking member of the Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence Subcommittee, called it a “witch hunt” meant to distract from passing the Senate’s bipartisan border security package.
It’s unlikely the secretary will face a trial in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Mr. Mayorkas repeatedly defended his budget request and performance, blaming a broken system and saying the border was as safe as possible given his resources.
“It provides funding for hiring more enforcement personnel and bolstering refugee processing. Our immigration system, however, is fundamentally broken,” he said.
Mr. Mayorkas said Congress could fix the crisis by passing the Senate’s border bill. The bill was rejected by Republicans in part for allowing some 5,000 illegal migrants a day to enter the country over a seven-day rolling average.
“This budget provides for an $18 million increase to our department’s nonprofit security grant program and additional funds for targeted violence and terrorism prevention grants so that DHS can better help communities and prevent tragedies from occurring as lone actors and nation-states increasingly target our critical infrastructure and our data,” he said.
Budget and Policy Problems
GOP committee members also took issue with the lack of resources allocated to fight illegal immigration in the border chief’s budget and questioned Mr. Mayorkas about ties to a migrant group facilitating others to cross the border illegally.Videos posted on X, formerly Twitter, showed non-governmental organization flyers posted in portable toilets in Mexico urging illegal immigrants in the United States to vote for President Biden in November.
The flyer was supposedly from Resource Center Matamoros, but Fox News’s border reporter Bill Melugin questioned its authenticity, saying on X that the flyer seemed “fake or doctored.”
Ms. Greene said the resource center operates in conjunction with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which helps migrants of all faiths enter the United States.
She pointed out that Mr. Mayorkas was a former board member of HIAS, which has posted maps at migrant camps to help them along their route to the U.S. southern border.
When pressed by Republicans on whether he thought illegal immigrants should vote in any elections, Mr. Mayorkas said the question was outside the scope of DHS.
The secretary asked for 350 new Border Patrol agents—which some Republicans on the committee deemed a paltry number.
It was pointed out that the budget lacks funding to restart DNA testing for family units at the Southwest border, which Republicans believe is needed to safeguard unaccompanied children from exploitation.
Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers contend that Mr. Mayorkas is doing little to counteract threats from China and Iran.
Republicans have long expressed concern that mass migration over the last three and a half years has overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and allowed terrorists to slip into the country.
Border Patrol officials interviewed by the committee in 2023 said agents are often pulled from their regular patrol areas to deal with migrant surges, making it more likely for “gotaways” and illegal drugs to enter the country.
The committee issued a press release last December, saying that 294 illegal aliens on the terrorist watchlist have been apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry since the beginning of FY 2021—and those are only the ones Border Patrol agents have caught.
Rare Cabinet Impeachment
The historic House impeachment vote in February marked the first time a sitting member of the presidential cabinet had been impeached since the 1870s.“The facts are indisputable—for three years, Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and systemically refused to comply with the laws enacted by Congress, and he has breached the public trust.
“His actions created this unprecedented crisis, turning every state into a border state,” Mr. Green stated in a January press release.
Mr. Mayorkas’s “lawless” actions are behind the historic “national security, public safety, and humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.
After spending almost a year investigating the causes, costs, and consequences of mass illegal migration, the committee accused the secretary of refusing to comply with U.S. immigration laws.
Leading up to the impeachment proceeding, it published detailed reports of its findings, totaling nearly 400 pages.
