The ongoing crisis on the southern border of the United States has continued to escalate, and with fingers pointing at the head of Homeland Security, direct questions have revealed the dysfunction at the top level of government. Far from handling the problem, some leaders are enabling it and now we know the intentions of the individual tasked with overseeing the matters on U.S. borders.
This month Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced a new article of impeachment against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that accuses him of violating his oath of office and refusing to enforce duly-passed immigration laws. The report noted further that Biggs has often called for Mayorkas to be removed from his position, accusing him in 2021 of having “engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties as an Officer of the United States,” Fox News reported.
After a record 2.3 million encounters with migrants crossing illegally into the U.S. during the fiscal year 2022 — and in December alone, more than 251,000 — the impeachment push has been renewed after Republicans took over the House in January.
“Secretary Mayorkas has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the Constitution and the security of the United States,” the article states, according to Fox News. “Secretary Mayorkas has violated, and continues to violate, this oath by failing to maintain operational control of the border and releasing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the interior of the United States.”
And, in a recent interview Mayorkas revealed his personal thoughts that are crucial to his failure.
In an interview with CNN host and former Fox News host, Chris Wallace, the secretary insisted that there was more than one definition to the phrase “secure border.”
“Our goal is to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country,” he said to Wallace. “The law needs to be changed if it does not either meet our highest ideals or actually proves to be functional in the service of those ideals,” the secretary said, freely admitting he does not agree with laws and is intent on his own agenda.
When confronted with the fact that many Republicans have demanded he resign, he was defiant. “I’m not going to resign,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of work to do, and we are doing it and I’m incredibly proud to do it,” he said, Conservative Brief reported.
Wallace asked Mayorkas why he would impose pro-migration policies that negatively affect American citizens and their families, and Mayorkas revealed his personal agenda due to his family’s background.
“My parents instilled in me the profound meaning of displacement, the yearning to give one’s children a better life than what the life one has had, [and] the fragility of life. And so I understand deeply the plight of individuals who will leave their homes, whether they flee persecution or aspire to a better life. We, in the United States, have tremendous pride in our country as a place of refuge. We are a nation of immigrants,” he said.
“My mother, given the tragedy that she lived through — her father lost everybody except the sister in the Holocaust — she understood that every day is a new life. The world did not have the privilege of recognizing the beauty of my parents. And through the work I do, I hope I can communicate that in some way,” he said.
Still trying to bring the issue back to the laws of entry to the U.S.“What does ‘secure’ mean to you?” Wallace asked.
“There is not a common definition of that,” the secretary said. “If one looks at [Congress’s 2006] statutory definition, the literal interpretation of the statutory language, if one person successfully evades law enforcement at the border, then we have breached the security of the border … Our goal is to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies, that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country. I say that because in the prior [Donald Trump] administration, policies were promulgated or passed that did not hew to the values that we hold dear.:”
“We, in the United States, have tremendous pride in our country as a country, a place of refuge. We are a nation of immigrants. We are also a nation of laws. Those laws provide for humanitarian relief for those who qualify. They also provide that individuals who do not qualify will be removed. That’s how we do our work at the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.
Mayorkas sounds more like a lobbyist of immigration laws than a leader tasked with securing borders.
