On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argued that the Biden administration is “using our legal muscle more aggressively than it has been in the past” on immigration law, but people are coming to the border because our economy is stronger than the other economies in the Western Hemisphere.
Host Neil Cavuto asked, [relevant exchange begins around 4:00] “[A] lot of your critics have said, as they have of your boss, you botched this, you botched what’s going on at the border. Donald Trump was much tougher on the border, believed in a wall, it seemed to work, you did not, the president did not, and this is all catch-up for you guys. What do you say, Secretary?”
Mayorkas responded, “Neil, let’s take a look at the history of migration, rather than take political snapshots. The history of migration is that the level of encounters at our southern border increased almost 100% in 2019 over 2018. What distinguished 2020, when the numbers dropped significantly? The COVID-19 pandemic, that really dropped migration, not just to our southern border, not just throughout the Western Hemisphere, but around the world. And we, this country, under the leadership of President Biden, overcame the COVID-19 pandemic more rapidly than any country in our hemisphere, our economy came roaring back more than in any country in our Western Hemisphere, and people seek to come to the United States because of the opportunities here, the economic opportunities here. We still have approximately 8 million vacant jobs in the United States that American workers are not filling. And so, therefore, our asylum system, which is fundamentally broken, presents an opportunity for them to remain here for too long. Despite that, within the authorities that we have, we have returned or removed more people in the last twelve months than in any full fiscal year. And we’re using our legal muscle more aggressively than it has been in the past. But we are restricted by a broken system, which is why we continue to believe that the Senate must pass the legislation.”
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