GOP Senator Grills DHS Secretary on Border Situation: ‘You Are Failing Miserably’
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced a call for his resignation and a push for a no-confidence vote during a Senate hearing. On Tuesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) ripped into Mayorkas’ job performance…
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced a call for his resignation and a push for a no-confidence vote during a Senate hearing.
On Tuesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) ripped into Mayorkas’ job performance and handling of the southern border.
“You are failing miserably,” Johnson said before citing some statistics about border crossing. “Four to five million people, 1.4 million unknown got aways. We have no idea who those people are… You’re not giving me any stats whatsoever in terms of the number of people that are human trafficked, how many young girls are sex trafficked.”
He went on:
“Do you not care? Do you not have just an ounce of human compassion for what your open border policy — the type of human depredations it is causing? You just sit there looking with a blank look on your face.”
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Finally, Johnson scoffed at Mayorkas’ statement the border is a priority.
He added, “Mr. Secretary, you ought to resign.”
Mayorkas was given some time to push back on the senator’s accusations. He insisted Johnson “mischaracterizes our policies with respect to the security of the southern border.”
He also accused Johnson of misrepresenting the department’s resolve to address human trafficking.
Finally, Mayorkas said, “The senator misstates the data because he confuses encounters with unique individuals.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) also ripped into Mayorkas as he revealed a resolution to hold a vote of no-confidence in the secretary. He said, “Mr. Secretary, you are derelict in your duties. I would be derelict to not do something about this. And that’s why I have a draft resolution here that I intend to introduce in the coming days that would require the Senate to take a vote of no confidence on Secretary Mayorkas.”
“I stand at the ready to receive articles of impeachment from the House and conduct an impeachment trial in this body,” he continued, adding, “But in the meantime, I think the Senate must show our colleagues in the House that we’ve had enough of the failures from the Department of Homeland Security and believe that the secretary is not fit to faithfully carry out the duties of his office.”
In the 2022 fiscal year, border officials encountered more than 2 million migrants. And in the 2021 fiscal year, there were 1.9 million encounters.
However, officials say some encounters with migrants involved individuals who had previously tried to cross the border.
Meanwhile, a Customs and Border Protection source told Fox News authorities were aware of 599,000 migrants who crossed the border and evaded officials in the 2022 fiscal year.