Republicans claimed the Biden administration’s declining border crossing numbers post-Title 42 are nothing more than a smokescreen covering up the reality that immigrants are being waved into the country at ports of entry.
A day ahead of a House hearing that will begin a new investigative effort into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) issued a scathing accusation that the Biden Cabinet official was trying to funnel hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country and trick the public into believing border numbers were down.
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Green claimed the Biden administration’s expanded use of a phone app that allows immigrants outside the United States to request interviews with officials at the ports of entry was a cover for illegal immigration.
“Since January 2023, Secretary Mayorkas has been engaging in a shell game at the expense of the American people by painting otherwise unlawful border crossings as legal entries,” Green wrote in a statement. “It’s clear that Secretary Mayorkas never had a plan to secure our border or end this crisis; he just had a scheme to hide it in plain sight.”
The Department of Homeland Security took a victory lap last week for the sharp decrease in illegal crossings between the ports of entry in recent weeks since Title 42 ended. Mayorkas attributed the decline, in part, to people going about admission legally.
“As a result of planning and execution — which combined stiffer consequences for unlawful entry with a historic expansion of lawful pathways and processes — unlawful entries between ports of entry along the Southwest Border have decreased by more than 70 percent since May 11,” DHS said in a statement issued June 6.
Mayorkas announced the CBP One app in January as a way for immigrants in Mexico to request appointments at ports of entry rather than enter illegally around them.
Green shared a House Homeland Security Committee talking points paper that stated port officials had encountered 197,000 noncitizens in the first seven months of fiscal 2023 versus 79,000 a year ago.
“The Biden administration is now using the CBP One app to incentivize illegal aliens to schedule an appointment to claim asylum directly at a [port of entry]. This is a deceptive attempt to make the chaos at the border appear more orderly,” Green said.
But even when including the number of people arriving at the ports through the app, fewer total people have been encountered along the southern border since Title 42 than before. In addition, the number of people deemed inadmissible at the port does not mean they were released into the U.S., as was typically the case with people Border Patrol apprehended outside the ports.
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The number of noncitizens encountered both at the ports and between ports declined from more than 11,000 per day in early May to an average of 3,700 encounters per day in the following weeks.
Green is expected to continue hammering that claim in Wednesday’s hearing with Mayorkas before the committee.
