(The Center Square) – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the southern border in the Tucson sector on Wednesday after recent Biden administration policy changes.
The Tucson sector is one of the country’s busiest with 406,441 encounters this fiscal year so far. President Joe Biden ordered a cap on migrants coming in earlier this month based on weekly averages. Since the action roughly three years after the crisis began to take off, Mayorkas and the federal government are saying the new stricter policies are working.
“The President’s actions are working because of their tough response to illegal crossings and because they build on our sustained efforts to exercise our full authorities to enforce the law and impose consequences for illegal entry,” Mayorkas said in his remarks . “We are attacking the smuggling organizations that prey on the vulnerable even as the smugglers try to undermine our actions. We are also working with partner nations in the region and building lawful pathways for people to seek humanitarian relief in a safe and orderly way.”
The Biden administration and Democrats have continued to criticize Republicans who did not back a congressional border deal months ago. Proponents of the bill argued that the bill would help boost staffing and process migrants easier, whereas others said it would not have done enough to solve the border crisis itself.
“I want to reiterate: this is no substitute – the executive actions are no substitute – for Congressional action. Only Congress can deliver a full and lasting solution. Only Congress, through legislation, can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system that was last updated almost 30 years ago,” Mayorkas added. “Only Congress can give us the resources we need. We have been under-resourced for decades. We need timely funds to hire more agents, officers, and support personnel; to buy, install and maintain more technology; hire more judges to move cases faster; and equip us to remove more quickly people who do not qualify for relief, and more. Only Congress can provide these funds.”
However, some argue that the action from the Biden administration came too late.
“The Border Security Alliance agrees with Secretary Mayorkas that there needs to be comprehensive Congressional overhaul of the immigration system,” the Arizona-based Border Security Alliance President Jobe Dickinson told The Center Square in a statement.
“However, the damage that has been done by the Biden Administration and Secretary Mayorkas by not implementing this type of Executive Order three years ago is what has done irreparable harm to our country. The recent action by the Biden Administration is too little too late and a clear attempt to save face during a pivotal election year. Until we can get Congress to act, we need to have strong Executive Orders in place such as the Migrant Protection Protocols under President Trump. We will wait and see if President Biden’s Executive Order continues to work as well as they are reporting," he continued.
The secretary was impeached by the Republican-majority House of Representatives in February, but the effort was scrapped by the Democratic-majority Senate in April.
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