Washington — Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas “A really good solution was lost to irresponsible politics” when a bipartisan border deal collapsed earlier this year, he said, nearing the end of his term directing the nation’s immigration enforcement.
Mayorkas pointed out: agreement on border package The bill, reached by a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators in February, after months of deliberation, would mark the first comprehensive border security policy overhaul in decades and give the president broad authority to crack down on illegal border crossings. Reached. But the bill reject quickly After U.S. President-elect Donald Trump expressed his opposition, the Republican Party expressed its opposition.
After the bill failed, the Biden administration enacted asylum restrictions that dramatically cut off immigration flows. Asked about the timing amid criticism from Republicans that the Biden administration has the authority to take action at the border without Congress, Mayorkas acknowledged that the administration could have acted sooner if it had known the border agreement would be torpedoed.
“Looking back now, if we had known that irresponsible politics clearly killed worthy efforts and worthy results in 2020, perhaps we would have taken executive action more quickly,” Mayorkas said in an interview. Stand up to your country with Margaret Brennan.”
The comments came as border crossings were suspended. The lowest level of the Biden administrationAfter hitting record highs a year ago.
The Secretary of Homeland Security pointed out that before Biden took office, “migration trend lines” increased exponentially globally in 2018 and 2019, “and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.” He added that over time, as the Biden administration builds capacity to transport individuals and decompress areas experiencing immigration surges, “we have been executing unprecedented levels of enforcement throughout this administration.”
“We are now removing or repatriating more individuals in three years than the previous administration did in four years. Our negotiations with other countries and with more countries than ever before are growing not only in scale but also in speed. It was,” Mayorkas said.