By Corinne Murdock |
House Democrats believe that Americans who think the border is mismanaged are “confused.”
Democrats in the House Homeland Security Committee issued the remarks during a press conference on Monday addressing the newly-released articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas. Committee Republicans published the draft articles on Sunday.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS-02), ranking member, indicated that DHS was handling the border correctly and operating in line with the direction of President Joe Biden. Thompson noted that the greater concern for he and his Democratic colleagues was that the impeachment efforts were the cause of lost confidence in DHS and Mayorkas.
“Democrats are real concerned that this is just one of those efforts to confuse the public that something is going wrong at the Department of Homeland Security. Our secretary works at the direction of the president,” said Thompson. “This notion that in carrying out the directions of your boss somehow is an impeachable offense is wrong.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-08) also spoke at the press conference. Jeffries claimed that it was “extreme MAGA Republicans” who were misleading the American public on the state of the border. Jeffries further claimed that House Republicans produced “no evidence” that Mayorkas committed an impeachable or unconstitutional offense.
“The extreme MAGA republicans have been directed by Donald Trump not to work together to address the challenges at the border and to instead distract the American people,” said Jeffries.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY-10), another committee member, argued that Republicans caused the border crisis. Goldman claimed that the Biden administration implemented policies to streamline the asylum process, reduce the immigration case backlog, and a cessation of illegal immigration between ports of entry.
“The Republicans are literally trying to stop the administration from securing the border, while they are saying, and so they can say, that the administration is not securing the border,” said Goldman. “They are creating this situation and then they want to blame President Biden.”
Under the first few weeks of his administration, the country experienced an unprecedented deluge of illegal immigration after Biden reversed most of the border policies from his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
As reported extensively throughout investigations published by the Homeland Security Committee and border agents on the ground, illegal immigrants and cartels have become increasingly emboldened to violate border and trafficking laws. Last week, smugglers assaulted a Border Patrol agent arresting several illegal immigrants.
Since Biden took office, there have been over 7.15 million illegal immigrant encounters at the southern border, and an unknown number of gotaways estimated in total to be around several million.
In the 2023 fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested over 35,400 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions nationwide, of whom nearly 600 were known gang members. Since the 2021 fiscal year, agents have arrested nearly 300 illegal immigrants on the terrorist watchlist.
The House Homeland Security Committee is scheduled to consider the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas on Tuesday at 8 am. The hearing will be streamed here.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
