DHS Secretary Blames Trump and Congress

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has begun testifying before Congress in a string of committee hearings regarding the crisis at our southern border. And what has he said is the reason for the crisis? Former President Trump and Congress.

Sec. Mayorkas tried to shift the blame when he told the House Appropriations subcommittee:

We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain. It is not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows. Only Congress can fix this. Yet, we have effectively managed an unprecedented number of non-citizens seeking to enter the United States.

To make matters worse, the wall that former President Trump initiated, which alleviated some of the major issues we have seen at the border, Sec. Mayorkas indicated that your tax dollars will be used to dismantle the wall:

The wall projects, the majority of them, rest in the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers. Those that we ourselves control, I believe that the cost of discontinuing them is approximately $72 million dollars. And I will follow up with you to ensure the accuracy of my statement this morning.

So, the Biden Administration is removing the border wall, and also going to remove Title 42 – the pandemic era policy that helped control the number of migrants that cross the border – as we’ve told you. When United States Attorney General Merrick Garland was asked about what would happen if this Administration removes Title 42, he admitted:

I think all intelligence suggests that there will be a large increase at the border, yes.

So, knowing this, the Biden Administration is still removing these two mechanisms that have proven to work? We filed a FOIA lawsuit to get to the bottom of this and we are in negotiations today with the DOJ in our ongoing lawsuit, trying to get some answers as to why these policies are being removed with no plan in place.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett provided his takeaways from the hearing so far:

I do think probably the most difficult and the most useful hearing will be the one tomorrow in the House Judiciary. . . . Honestly, we already have more sound from this hearing than I hardly know what to start with. I want to give you two quick takeaways from what we’ve seen so far. . . . Secretary Mayorkas is blaming the problem that they have at the border on an inherited problem and that the border was already under strain. Guess what rescinding Title 42 is going to do? It is going to add 100,000 people to whatever strain is there already . . . and one other thing, he says that congress has to fix this . . . but we throw around this Title 42. Title 42 is a statute . . .  Congress already passed that. The President already signed it. It is already there for the President to use. They are not using it. So, for him to say this is up to Congress to fix and he is not using the statute he already has, I think is dereliction of duty.

ACLJ Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy and former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell explained how Sec. Mayorkas is making the border crisis political:

It is spectacularly political for Mayorkas to somehow blame Donald Trump. Everyone knows it is not true. Everyone knows we had the border completely closed. We were dealing with individuals, and it has now skyrocketed into a crisis. It is a bipartisan concern. I see Democrats all over including on border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico. We’ve got Democrats and Independents that are very concerned about what is happening. Mayorkas is a total failure and Republicans need to act quickly. This is a border. This is about safety, and security, and national security.

And with war brewing in Eastern Europe, our national security has never been more critical. In a new development, Russia has stopped giving gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland. Ric also gave his take on what this means:

Yesterday . . . we told the audience that the Biden Administration was trying to keep the Germans buying Russian gas and oil? Now what we see today is that the Russians are cutting off Poland and Bulgaria. Now, what that means is they are not cutting off the Germans. The Biden Administration is working to make sure that the Germans continue to purchase oil and gas from Russia. One has to ask, why is it that Germany, which purchases way more energy from Russia, why do they get to continue while other countries like Poland and Bulgaria are getting cut off by the Russians? The Biden Administration should be screaming at the top of their lungs about this. But instead, they are telling the Germans to keep buying to not impact the global price of oil at least until the midterm elections. So, there are a lot of politics being played by the Biden Administration.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more in-depth analysis of Sec. Mayorkas’s congressional hearing testimony and the implications of Russia halting gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria.

Watch the full broadcast below: