Alejandro Mayorkas’s designed failure at the border is disgraceful

Every few months, the House Committee on Homeland Security has published a new section of a report documenting both the deliberate mismanagement and the incompetence currently sabotaging the nation’s border security and immigration system. The architect of both is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

It is hard to think of a single appointed official in U.S. history who has done more harm to this country’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and rule of law than this one man.

So far, the report comprises four sections, presenting investigative research and analysis — 250 pages of concise, compulsive and damning evidence that every voter should read. Only the conclusion remains to be released.

Part One describes Mayorkas’s “dereliction of duty,” calling him the “chief architect of the illegal immigration crisis that Americans have suffered through since January 2021.” Despite his repeated public claims that “the border is closed” or “secure,” everything Mayorkas has done since assuming office has ensured the opposite.

First, he dropped agreements with Mexico and other countries that had effectively deterred fraudulent asylum claims by keeping applicants out of the country while their claims were evaluated. Second, he stopped work on physical barriers at the border that could control and channel illegal entry. Then he took the highly limited parole power in immigration law and abused it to mass-import aliens from favored countries.

A federal lawsuit led by Texas may soon end this gross usurpation of authority, but even that may not slow Mayorkas down. He is already overriding legal restrictions on open borders. Ignoring a legal requirement to detain those entering illegally, pending a decision in their deportation cases, he releases them into the country on unenforceable promises that they will later turn themselves in for due process.

Meanwhile, inside the U.S., Mayorkas’s directives prevent Department of Homeland Security from enforcing immigration laws and decisions. This has produced a massive decline in removals (there were only 72,000 last year, down from 186,000 in 2020) and left almost 6 million aliens wandering free, pending court process. Given the almost insurmountable backlog of immigration cases, all this amounts to a de facto amnesty.

Part Two of the report describes how Mayorkas’s destruction of border security has helped Mexican criminal syndicates make billions in profits, penetrate every U.S. state and control all traffic at our southern border. In his drive to process as many migrants into the U.S. as possible after they have entered illegally, Mayorkas has pulled Border Patrol officers off the line to perform this administrative task.

This has weakened our defenses to the point where cartels can move people and drugs at will. Fentanyl, all of it coming from Mexico, is now the biggest killer of young Americans. In 2022, the DEA alone seized enough of it to kill every American, and the government estimates it only catches 10 percent of the fatal drug.

The report’s Part Three is a heart-breaking look at the human costs of open borders. The millions released on Mayorkas’s watch have not been properly identified or vetted for criminal history, and some are serious risks. American citizens in every state are now subject to rising rates of preventable crime, including murder, sexual violence, drunk driving, and retail theft. More than 400,000 known criminal aliens are in the U.S. In fiscal 2022, barely 10 percent of this number were even arrested, let alone removed.

Moreover, Mayorkas has encouraged the mass-migration of minors by saying he would not deport them. At least 400,000 have entered so far on his watch, at incalculable cost to U.S. taxpayers and at incalculable risk to the health and wellbeing of the migrant children themselves.

Part Four, released Nov. 13, lays out the staggering financial drain on American taxpayers of trying to square unlimited immigration with a welfare state run by debt-laden state and federal governments. Migrants who enter the U.S. illegally consume approximately $150 billion more per year in education, welfare, health care, and other public services than they produce. They are three times more likely to be jailed than legal immigrants or citizens, straining our police, courts, and prisons, as well as hurting the victims themselves. They also cost up to $80 billion a year in public education at a time when school districts are already failing to teach native students to read or do math.

Cities from San Diego to Chicago to New York are out of answers to deal with the never-ending flow from the border facilitated by Mayorkas’s policy choices.

Although the formal conclusion of this report is yet to come, we already know the score. This is a damning indictment of President Biden and the man he personally chose to run the agency in charge of protecting our country’s domestic safety. The four published sections leave no doubt that Mayorkas should have resigned long ago in shame. Instead, he evades responsibility, demands more money to process still more aliens, and blames Congress for problems he himself created.

The report makes a persuasive case that Mayorkas warrants impeachment. He has defied the oath he took to uphold the Constitution, violated immigration laws, endangered Americans and migrants, and lied to both Congress and the American public.

No matter how polarized Congress may be, in light of this report, surely a majority of the House and Senate cannot find what Mayorkas has done to our homeland to be acceptable. The House should vote to impeach him and force senators to go on the record with their judgment as well.

Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.