Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is pushing back on criticism the Biden administration has received over its plans to lift Title 42, saying officials are prepared for the move later this week.
During a Sunday appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” moderator Margret Brennan mentioned recent criticism from Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).
“Well, I respectfully disagree with the senator and the governor. Number one, we are prepared. As we noted at the very beginning of our conversation, we’ve been preparing for this for quite some time,” Mayorkas told Brennan. “We tried to end Title 42 repeatedly and were stopped from doing so by the courts, so we are prepared, number one.”
“Number two, we have a migration information center that is specifically set up to communicate with state and local officials. And we have been doing so. We are using our FEMA regional coordinators as our key points of contact,” Mayorkas added. “I spoke with Sen. Sinema, I think within the last two weeks, and our personnel are in touch with other officials on a regular basis.”
Sinema has been critical of DHS, saying it is not sharing information on the numbers of migrants, processing time and available buses to transport them in her home state, while Hobbs has focused on the amount of money needed for emergency shelters.
Mayorkas also told Brennan on Sunday that Congress needs to push for immigration reform in the near future.
“Everything that the Department of Homeland Security is doing, everything that our partners across the federal government are doing, is within a broken immigration system,” Mayokas said. “The president passed to Congress a proposal to fix our broken immigration system on the first day in office.”
“But that’s like a to-do list. That’s different than putting your shoulder behind it, picking up the phone and saying, excuse me, ‘Democrats control the Senate, let’s be out front on immigration?’ ” Brennan asked.
“Margaret, we have been pushing for immigration legislation since day one. And by the way, it didn’t start on day one,” Mayokas replied. “This is a decades-long problem.”
The Biden administration is temporarily deploying 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of an anticipated migrant surge when the controversial pandemic-era policy, which allowed the U.S. to more easily expel migrants seeking asylum at the border, expires.
–Updated at 11:37 a.m.