House lawmakers have taken legal action against the Biden administration and subpoenaed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for information on national security and terrorism threats at the border.
House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) announced Friday afternoon that the committee had sent a subpoena to Mayorkas following the panel’s “more than a year” of “stonewalling” lawmakers requests for records on illegal immigrants arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border who were on the FBI terrorist watch list.
“President Biden and his now-impeached DHS secretary’s refusal to secure our borders or comply with our laws is putting our country in rapidly growing peril,” Green said in a statement. “Secretary Mayorkas has continued to stonewall congressional oversight and clearly will not comply unless compelled to do so — because he knows this information places the blame squarely at his and President Biden’s feet.”
Green joined the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and House Judiciary Committee in May 2023 to send the Department of Homeland Security a letter that sought details on the extent to which Border Patrol was apprehending illegal immigrants with terrorist affiliations.
By fall 2023, Republicans followed up after not receiving adequate information. Lawmakers expressed concerns about what the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel in October 2023 could mean for homeland security in the United States given major vulnerabilities at the southern border.
Republican and Democratic members of Congress said more needs to be done to secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico after seeing how militants from a foreign terrorist organization broke across the Israel-Gaza Strip border and committed mass atrocities.
“Despite over a year of follow ups and accommodating the Department’s protracted schedules and insufficient attempts to respond to some of the requests in the May 19, 2023 letter, the Committee’s requests largely remain unsatisfied and are 409 days delinquent with no definitive timeline for production," Green said on Friday. "The Department’s demonstrated approach to indefinitely protract production necessitates issuance of the enclosed subpoena."
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border and determined while in custody to be on the FBI terrorist watch list has spiked under President Joe Biden.
In fiscal 2023, which ended in September last year, the Border Patrol caught more than 172 known or suspected terrorists illegally entering the U.S. from Mexico or Canada.
The figure is a far cry from single-digit terrorist watch list numbers seen throughout the Trump administration. The dramatic increase to double and now triple digits over the past several years has especially drawn concern from Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Last December, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Mayorkas for DHS files on 14 illegal immigrants who were apprehended at the southern border, released into the U.S., and later arrested and charged for committing serious crimes, such as assault, murder, terrorism-related offenses, and theft.
The Washington Examiner reached out to DHS for comment.
Most Popular
Comments / 0