Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called on the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, to resign As the Biden Administration broke the record for border encounters for the second year in a row.
In August, Customs and Border Enforcement reported encountering 203,597 aliens at the border or immigration field offices. August’s numbers also mean the fiscal year-to-date alien encounter total has topped more than two million (2,150,639) for the first time in history. The previous record was also set under President Biden in FY2021 when 1,734,686 aliens were encountered at the border.
For context, there have been approximately 3.3M illegal alien apprehensions since President Biden took office. Additionally, none of those above figures include the tens of thousands of illegal alien “got-aways” who illegally cross the border but avoid apprehension each month.
Sen. Hawley published a letter on Wednesday calling for Mayorkas’s resignation. The Senator’s letter read:
I write with alarm over record-setting levels of illegal immigration into our country. According to your own department’s statistics, Customs & Border Protection agents have now encountered over 2 million illegal immigrants crossing our southern border this fiscal year. This is substantially higher than last year’s record 1.7 million encounters, and the year is still not even over. This number represents more than a four-fold increase in illegal immigration compared to FY 2020. And these are only the official statistics, which fail to capture the many got-aways who evaded detection. After two years on the job, you have demonstrated that you have no intention of enforcing our immigration laws.
Your total abdication of responsibility to secure the border has consequences. It has resulted in a record 78 individuals on a terror watchlist entering our country this year alone. And those are only the ones we know about.
Sadly, I think you do. This was the predictable result of your open border policies. Your intentional disregard for our country’s immigration laws makes you unfit to remain in office. You should resign.
Unfortunately, the record-breaking border numbers coincided with the Biden Admin.’s decision to massively expand the disastrous “catch and release” program, which is the primary vehicle used by the current Admin. to release illegal aliens into the nation’s interior en masse.
A recent DHS Inspector General report revealed that the Biden Admin. is releasing aliens into the country without issuing them tracking numbers. The IG report continues:
We found that Border Patrol did not issue A-numbers for 107 of 384 migrants, most of whom were paroled into the country or issued Notices to Report. Agents did not always assign A-numbers because they were trying to expedite processing and move migrants out of Border Patrol facilities that were over capacity.
Additionally, Border Patrol did not always maintain migrants’ alien files. Border Patrol and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could not provide 80 of the requested 384 migrant files because they were either lost, disposed of, or in transit. Border Patrol disposed of the files because they did not have A-numbers and were unaware of record retention requirements.
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