- A report by the House Homeland Security Committee describes challenges faced by U.S. law enforcement, citizens and illegal immigrants under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
- The report cites open-source information to illustrate an increase in fentanyl trafficking, migrant child exploitation, border patrol agent suicides and increased crime as a result of Mayorkas’ policies.
- “[T]hese data points are merely a snapshot of horrors being perpetrated against Americans and migrants alike, every single day under this secretary,” the report reads.
A new report released by Republicans on the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security describes conditions of burnout by U.S. Border Patrol agents and an increase in human trafficking, among other problems, along the international border between the U.S. and Mexico under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The report, released on Tuesday, is the third phase in a long investigation of Mayorkas and the broader Biden administration’s leadership on border security and immigration. Over five sections, the report cites openly sourced information to claim that border patrol agents, U.S. citizens and foreign migrants to America have suffered because of “Mayorkas’ coldly calculated, political decision to open the border.” (RELATED: Biden Claims Border Wall Doesn’t Work Day After His Admin Touts New Construction)
“As the American people learn of the awful consequences of these policies, they must remember that these data points are merely a snapshot of horrors being perpetrated against Americans and migrants alike, every single day under this secretary,” the report’s introduction reads.
Report – The Devastating Costs of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ Open Borders Policies by Daily Caller News Foundation on Scribd
“While the House Majority has wasted months trying to score points with baseless attacks, Secretary Mayorkas has been doing his job and working to keep Americans safe,” wrote a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Instead of continuing their reckless attacks, Congress should work with us to keep our country safe, build on the progress DHS is making, and deliver desperately needed reforms for our broken immigration system that only legislation can fix.”
The first section of the report describes the inflow of fentanyl from Mexico into the United States, which it claims has occurred due to smuggling by drug cartels across the land border. “[C]artels seek to take further advantage of the now-porous Southwest border. Through August 2023, Border Patrol agents had seized roughly 2,700 pounds of fentanyl, already surpassing [Fiscal Year 2022] total seizures, and nearly tripling those from [Fiscal Year 2021],” the report reads.
“As Border Patrol agents are pulled off the line to process and release illegal aliens into the interior, the cartels have shifted their tactics to exploit the vulnerabilities those personnel shortfalls have created,” the report also states.
Another section focuses on the effects of the increase in illegal migration on immigration law enforcement personnel, such as agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and officers of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which includes the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP). “[T]he men and women of CBP and [ICE], have had their hands tied by Mayorkas’ radical, nonsensical, and anti-enforcement policies,” the report reads.
The report details an increase in suicides among CBP personnel, with 17 officers taking their lives in 2022, the highest number in over a decade. It attributes these instances to the stress of their work and the strong emotional situations that CBP officers and USBP agents encounter on a daily basis due to increased migrant influx across the border, as well as a lack of mental health support.
“Parents are missing 30% of the year, and [are] unable to participate in many family functions. … Divorce rates and suicides are rampant in the agency,” the report quotes a CBP officer’s comments to the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General. “[W]e actually get phone calls of agents on that last straw, trying to speak to my husband that they’re on the verge, that they’re on the verge of taking their life,” said Mayra Cantu, the wife of a USBP agent in Texas, in a statement quoted by the report.
The report’s fifth section, meanwhile, details the “massive windfall for human smugglers and traffickers,” whereby unaccompanied minors are often placed with unrelated adults, so as to ensure the adults are admitted into the U.S. under a policy of family reunification, a practice known as “recycling.”
“When these minors arrive at the border, the historic number of illegal aliens flooding across the border makes it nearly impossible for CBP officials to take the necessary steps to ensure that they are not being trafficked,” it reads.
House Republicans have repeatedly attacked Mayorkas for the Biden administration’s border security policy, arguing that the removal of Trump administration restrictions on illegal immigration has contributed to the problems they described. Four members have introduced separate articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, though none have received a vote on the floor of the House and no impeachment inquiry has begun.
The committee’s first two reports, released on July 19 and Sept. 7, describe the national security risks of a porous border.
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