AUSTIN—Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas criticized Texas’s attempts to stop illegal immigration while praising Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in addressing the “root causes” of the border crisis.
Mayorkas spoke Sept. 6 at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
The annual festival hosts a slate of political speakers, newsmakers, and journalists who discuss current events.
“This is the first time that in my 20 to 22 years of government service that I have seen a state act in direct contravention of national interests,” Mayorkas said.
Some 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States after President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. In March 2021, he put Harris in charge of dealing with illegal immigration. Harris, now the Democratic Party nominee for president, faces criticism for the border crisis as the 2024 election draws near.
Texas has spent $11 billion on Operation Lone Star, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers, transporting illegal immigrants to self-declared sanctuary cities, installing strategic barriers, and building the state’s border wall, according to Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary.
Texas’s Operation Lone Star was launched in March 2021 to address “dangerous gaps” in border security created by Biden and Harris, Mahaleris said in an email to The Epoch Times.
Those efforts have decreased illegal border crossings by 85 percent, he said.
“Until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border, Texas will continue utilizing every tool and strategy to respond,” Mahaleris said.
Mayorkas called Abbott’s efforts to bus illegal immigrants to other states and cities without notice or coordination with receiving cities “incomprehensible” and not good governance.
“Is it purely to wreak havoc and disorder in the receiving communities to make a political point?” Mayorkas said.
He also criticized Senate Bill 4, which Abbott signed into law and was meant to go into effect on March 5, but instead remains in limbo after the Biden administration sued. Mayorkas said immigration is the federal government’s responsibility.
SB 4 makes crossing into Texas unlawfully from a foreign nation a state felony and empowers state and local law enforcement to make arrests and carry out deportations. The law has some similarities to the 2010 Arizona law, which ended up being mostly struck down in a 5–4 Supreme Court decision in 2012. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said the Supreme Court got the Arizona decision wrong and that it needs to be relitigated.
In Austin, Mayorkas defended Harris, saying she had done her job in addressing the “root causes” of mass migration to the United States.
“The vice president has done an extraordinary job in a public-private partnership driving resources to the countries in the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala specifically,” he said.
The public-private partnerships invest in those countries to build industries and generate jobs as a way of addressing why migrants leave their countries, he said.
Root causes include violence, poverty, extreme weather events, and corruption, he said.
Mayorkas said the failed Senate’s bipartisan border bill would have helped control immigration, but “forces stepped in to prevent the solution.”
Republicans blocked the bill twice and Trump said it would do more harm than good, writing on Truth Social that it only gives border shutdown authority after 5,000 illegal immigrant encounters a day.
Trump maintains that the president has the authority to close the border like he did without additional legislation.
Tensions between congressional Republicans and Mayorkas led to the House of Representatives impeaching him on Feb. 13. However, the effort died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Mayorkas did not address the potential for a new wave of illegal immigrants following the resumption of a controversial parole program and a coordinated effort with Mexico to assist migrants to the U.S. border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which sits in the Department of Homeland Security, announced on Aug. 23 that its updated CBP One app was expanded to operate south of Mexico City for migrants seeking appointments at U.S. ports of entry.
The app allows would-be illegal immigrants to be processed for asylum claims by CBP agents at ports of entry in border states, with most being released into the country.
Mexico recently announced that it will offer migrants in the southern parts of its country free bus rides and meals to the U.S. southern border if they have a confirmed appointment through the app.
The result was a decrease in illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border between ports of entry.
Up to 30,000 foreign nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are allowed to fly directly into U.S. airports every month under the program.
Parole applicants need a sponsor and to purchase their airplane tickets to qualify for the program.
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) has called the mass parole an “unlawful” program that was launched to obscure the problem of an overrun border.
