How do liberal elites consider the Department of Homeland Security’s performance under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas?
Let’s put it this way: Two days after a report indicated more than 80 percent of illegal immigrants “paroled” (read: caught and released) by the department under President Joe Biden just as Title 42 was being lifted hadn’t received a summons to appear in immigration court — with over 40 percent never checking in with authorities, period — a former Democratic House Homeland Security Committee member said Mayorkas was doing “a wonderful job” in the position.
The remarks came as the secretary was doing a question-and-answer with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, hosted by the Aspen Institute, on Thursday.
After Zakaria opened up the floor to questions, the first of the elites gathered in the Rocky Mountains at the forum — which bills itself as “a non-partisan public venue for global leaders to discuss the most pressing national security and foreign policy challenges” — to take a crack at Mayorkas was former California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, currently a member of the Defense Policy Board and former head of the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank.
Zakaria asked Harman before she started whether she liked the way Mayorkas was running it.
“You bet I do!” she exclaimed. “And I just want to say to you, Ale Majorkas, that under the most difficult circumstances and the political dysfunction of Washington, you’re doing a wonderful job.”
As RNC Research noted, this was after Mayorkas had presided over a DHS that had let more than 7 million illegal immigrants into the United States under its watch, often breaking monthly illegal migration numbers in the process. Plenty of them have also “vanished” — more on that later — but apparently, one of Washington’s elite thinks he’s doing a bang-up job.
“You’re doing a wonderful job!”
Mayorkas basks in praise from fellow leftist elites as he oversees the worst border crisis on record. 7+ million illegal immigrants have crossed since Biden took office — including 1.4+ million who vanished into the country pic.twitter.com/1c0KruD1Qr
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 21, 2023
Harman went on to say “Congress … has missed every opportunity to reform the system,” noting that she’d voted for then-President George W. Bush’s immigration plan in 2007; that plan, as it was proposed, would have provided a pathway to citizenship and temporary worker program for illegal immigrants already in the country while providing for a more secure border, increased measures to expedite assimilation and a crackdown on employing those who were completely undocumented.
She went on to ask about “the importation of fentanyl and fentanyl products” and the Transportation Safety Administration. If one is truly concerned about the former, one can’t seriously think that Mayorkas is doing “a wonderful job,” but that’s a matter for another day.
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Instead, we should probably focus on the fact that, on Tuesday, The Washington Times reported that, according to statistics the Biden administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement submitted to a federal judge, more than 80 percent of the illegal immigrants released via its “parole” program before the Title 42 pandemic border policy was lifted hadn’t been issued court summonses.
The illegal immigrants were “given 60 days to check in with ICE” after being released on parole, according to the Times’ Stephen Dinan.
“The migrants were among those caught in the days leading up to the May 11 termination of the Title 42 pandemic border expulsion authority. Expecting an overwhelming rush at the border, the Border Patrol announced that it would use ‘parole’ to catch and release people rather than fully processing them and issuing court summonses,” Dinan wrote.
“The 2,572 in question were processed for parole before Title 42 ended but weren’t released until after the expiration.”
The result? “More than 40% of the migrants never checked in at all,” Dinan reported. “Of the rest, ICE failed to issue a notice to appear — the immigration summons — in more than two-thirds of the cases.
“That works out to a success rate of just 18% for the test population.”
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In a new order issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell in Florida said the numbers were confirmation of an earlier ruling he’d handed down positing that “parole” was ineffective for dealing with the record influx of illegal immigrants the Biden administration has faced and will continue to face.
“These statistics are troubling to say the least,” Wetherell said Tuesday in a new order, according to the Times.
“But even more troubling is the fact that DHS apparently does not have a plan in place to track down the aliens who are in violation of the conditions of their ‘parole’ — and, thus, unlawfully in the country.”
DHS officials said ICE’s failure in the matter was due to “limited agency resources” and that they weren’t sure whether rule-breakers would be punished.
“DHS maintains its commitment that individuals have an obligation to comply with requirements imposed by DHS, and ICE is prepared to take such actions as may be required to ensure that individuals who were released pending the initiation of their immigration court proceedings comply with the terms of their release,” said Sarah B. Fabian, a lawyer with the Department of Justice.
Wetherell, however, said he was “skeptical that DHS is serious” about tracking violators down — and that while he didn’t have the power to order DHS to start arresting illegals who broke the terms of their “parole,” he could keep ensuring that DHS and ICE keep complying by submitting statistics to him.
The judge also noted the numbers were “only the tip of the iceberg,” given the number of other migrants “paroled” via the catch-and-release program.
But to hear the Jane Harmans of the world tell it, Mayorkas is doing a bang-up job.
It’s just the “dysfunction” in Washington that’s tripping him up. Those recalcitrant Republicans who won’t grant illegal immigrants amnesty, that’s the real problem here.
It’s not the record numbers pouring over our borders, it’s not the number of them who were caught and released that DHS and ICE has lost track of, it’s not the absolute refusal anyone in this administration to do anything concrete about drug and human trafficking.
Oh, no no no. It’s the Republicans and that darn dysfunction in Washington.
The folks in Aspen seem to like Alejandro Mayorkas a lot. Any chance he could just stay there and keep soaking up the plaudits of the elite while someone with an interest in enforcing our borders takes his place in D.C.?
