The progress of human rights in the United States despite the impeached Alejandro Mayorkas’s illegal immigration actions during the Biden administration
Mayorkas is the first Latino to hold the post since DHS’ creation in 2003. He oversees enforcement agencies U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes applications for immigration benefits like green cards and citizenship.
Earlier this year, Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans who alleged that his use of parole to allow some migrants into the country was unlawful. The charges were quickly dismissed by the Senate.
Alejandro Mayorkas says what they do is enforce the law. If an individual has a claim of humanitarian relief, for example, and their claim succeeds, then they have established a legal basis to remain in the United States. If their claim doesn’t work, they will be removed from the United States. We enforce the law.
Mayorkas: One, the numbers have decreased. The number of people moving increases and the number of people moving decreases. But the numbers have decreased. We have also removed or returned an historic number of people more this year than I think in any year since 2011.
The Tucson Sector of the border is a very busy one, and we talked with John Modlin who is the chief patrol officer. He said the increase began in 2021, just as the Biden administration was taking office, and that migrants say they believed the laws would be different and that they would be allowed in. I know the administration tried to message differently and told people not to come, but why do you think that didn’t work well?
Is Biden’s Border Plan Working? Here’s How the Top Immigration Official Says It Is Not Working: Reply to “Comment on ‘Is immigration plan working?'”
Mayorkas was absolutely correct. I’m not sure what the numbers are, but I’ll ballpark it. There were maybe about 560,000 encounters in 2018 and maybe close to a million in 2019.
Mayorkas: Remember what we are fighting. We battle organizations that peddle in deception. We need to counter that reality with accurate information.
Inskeep: It seems that I can define your policy difference with Republicans in part by the way in which you want people to come legally. Republicans don’t want people to come or not so many people to come. Is that a fair description?
Inskeep: They think the asylum seekers are taking advantage of the system. It’s time to talk about the asylum-seekers and not people who may come here legally.
Mayorkas: I think that empirically, when one takes a look at the numbers who have claimed and the numbers who succeed, I would respectfully submit that the majority do not qualify.
Comment on “The Border Reform,” by J. Ciscomani, M.A.D., a Republican Arizona Rep. Juan Cicermani
Inskeep: We spoke to Republican Arizona congressman Juan Ciscomani, who was born in Mexico. He says it’s taking too long for legal immigration applications to be processed, while the border is “wide open” for arriving migrants. The current law allows people to come and say, “I want asylum”, and they usually get several years before a court hearing.
The bipartisan legislation would have eliminated the years-long process between encounter and final adjudication in our ability to remove that individual. I would like the congressman to support the bipartisan legislation rather than oppose it. If people really want to fix the system, then they need to come up with solutions that work, rather than focusing on the problem and not implementing solutions.
The congresswoman claims that people are taking longer to process their cases because of the money we have spent on the border challenge. There are other reasons why the duration of time has been extended. The previous administration gutted the legal immigration system. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If the fee rule was implemented correctly, the agency would not have accumulated as much.
Editor’s note: Mayorkas referred to a failed bipartisan border that lost Republican support in the Senate after Trump opposed it. The deal would havemade it harder for people to claim asylum because it allotted $20 billion for border security.
During his presidency, Biden dealt with a record number of apprehensions at the border and a backlogged immigration system, as well as continuing some Trump-era policies. He’s been accused of either being too strict on people trying to leave their home countries or being too soft on immigration.
Trump promised to be tougher on immigration in his second term and said he would crack down on asylum-seekers at the border as well as immigrants already living in the country. Trump separated children from their parents, and ordered migrants to remain in Mexico, during his first term.
The Importance of the Border: Why Arizona’s 6th District is a Border State and Why the Democratic Party Will Not Be Decisive
“I’m proud to be an immigrant,” Ciscomani told NPR’s Steve Inskeep during an interview with Morning Edition. “I’m proud of the journey that we traveled, to be here.”
Ciscomani, a Republican, represents Arizona’s 6th Congressional District. The district is located at the Mexico/ United States border. The border and hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving there, many requesting asylum, are a key issue for his district.
Some people are frustrated by the amount of time it takes to get legal status in the US that isn’t asylum.
“They’re desperate because of how long it’s taking, ” Ciscomani said. “While the border seems to be or actually is wide open for people to just cross it illegally.”
Here’s what he had to say about Biden’s border policies, his own beliefs about immigration, and why he stands with the Republican policies for fixing the crisis at the border.
Juan Ciscomani: The moment that I registered to vote at 26, that’s the day that I signed the paperwork to become a Republican. I knew that I was conservative. I knew my values.
Ciscomani: Well, you’re correct. It is a growing number. The first time that I interned on Capitol Hill, there were three Hispanic Republicans in Congress. Now there’s now we have an organization of 18 of us that are Hispanic Republicans in the United States Congress. That number is increasing. It should grow even more.
What I’m seeing, though, is an acknowledgement that those policies aren’t working for us. If you ask your parents why they decided to live here, it’s like, hey, why did you make the move? They’ll probably give you three main reasons. They will say a better job, a better education for the kids, and more safe streets. The focus of the Democratic Party has been on other things.
Inskeep: Immigration is one of the issues that are on people’s minds in 2024. Do you assume that in your district, immigration policy will be decisive for at least some voters?
I’m not sure. For a fact, we know that. This is an issue that people think more of when I go. It was not always the case. Even though we’re a border district, a border state and immigration and border security has always been of interest and a priority for my district, It wasn’t always top. You know, you have other issues. Obviously, the economy, you have education, many other issues that are still important. But with the rise of the crisis and what’s happening, it’s just become a reality for people that are now impacting their daily lives. Issues like street releases of migrants wasn’t something that kept people up at night a few years ago. The issue is if you talk to the county officials. And having funding for that and and making sure that that we don’t have 1000 releases a day is what keeps them up.
Inskeep: As you probably know, there are a number of Republicans and people on the right who will offer a theory that Democrats are encouraging immigration, including illegal immigration, because they want them to become voters for them someday. Do you believe that?
You know the reasons why the Democrats have allowed this and why Joe Biden has allowed this? I can’t answer that. I wish I could because it’s so mind boggling to me why someone would allow this. You could initially believe that it’s incompetence, but you should be aware that that claim can only go so far. You can be this incompetent to not realize what’s happening. This is an election year and even in an election year when President Biden is facing the lowest approval numbers ever and border security and immigration is the number one issue, that issue has failed at the hands of Democrats. He doesn’t do anything about it.
Source: What Arizona’s Mexico-born Republican congressman thinks of the border situation
Is President Trump scapegoating illegal immigrants? Inskeep: Demography of the border state of this country and the worst crisis in American history
Inskeep: Trump has even connected immigrants in this country to his election difficulties. He thought he lost the popular vote in 2016 because illegal immigrants didn’t vote. Is he scapegoating immigrants?
Listen, I’m not going to speculate on the comments of the president or even try to interpret what he meant by those things. My border state is seeing the consequences of that and we need to stop it. The policies that President Trump had three years ago, three and a half years ago, did not cause any of this. Not a single legislative law has changed. Every change that Joe Biden has done, he’s done it through executive order. The cost of those changes has been found here. We are unable to govern this country by executive order. I am glad that President Trump did what he had to do on the border by executive order because he didn’t have the support of Congress to make sure that we supported the border. Joe Biden did it by executive order, which is not sustainable since the next president can possibly change everything on the first day. And cost is the worst crisis in American history on the border.