Alejandro Mayorkas Has Again Declined To Refer To The Increase In Border Activity As A “Crisis” Claiming That Doing So Would Suggest “Withdrawal From Our Mission”

Credit: Fox News

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas once again refunded to call the current situation at our southern border a “crisis” in an interview. He claimed that admitting so would indicate a “withdrawal from our mission.”

Mayorkas was asked during a recent interview with “60 Minutes” whether he viewed the ongoing situation at the border as a crisis. The border has seen a record 1.7 million migrant encounters in FY 2021 and more than 2.3 million in FY 2022.

“I view it as a significant challenge,” Mayorkas said.

He was asked why he wouldn’t use the word crisis and Mayorkas said it was because “I have tremendous faith in the people of the Department of Homeland Security.” 

“And a crisis speaks to me of a withdrawal from our mission. And we are only putting more force and more energy into it,” he said.

Mayorkas was grilled about the situation at the border during multiple hearings in the House and the Senate this week. Many Republicans said he should quit or be fired. 

The hearings had extra scrutiny in the wake of a hearing from last month featuring Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz who said that agents do not have “operational control” of the border.

“In five of those nine southwest border sectors, we have seen an increase in flow and that has caused a considerable strain on our resources and really has forced the Border Patrol to move so agents and even migrants to some of the other areas,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz also said that he disagreed with the move to end all wall construction and used the word “crisis” to describe the situation.

“The migration flow represents challenges and in some areas, a crisis situation,” he said.

Mayroakas was asked specifically if he agreed with those remarks.

“I think that we face a very serious challenge in parts of the border,” he said.

Fox News reported:

Republicans have linked the dramatic increase in migrants coming to the border to the Biden administration’s policies. The administration has sought to expand legal pathways, but has also ended a number of Trump-era border protections, stopped wall construction, narrowed interior enforcement, and expanded “catch-and-release.”

The administration has said it is seeking to promote humane and orderly migration and surging resources to the border while dealing with a crisis that is hemisphere-wide and fixing an asylum system that was gutted by the prior administration. It has also hit Republicans for refusing to agree to a number of border funding requests, including a nearly $5 billion request in December.

In the interview, Mayorkas once again argued that the surge was not being faced only by the United States.

“The number of people that are arriving at our border is at an extraordinary height. There’s no question about that. But that is not unique to the southern border of the United States. There is a tremendous amount of movement throughout the hemisphere and, in fact, throughout the world,” Mayorkas said.