Sen. Blackburn disputes Mayorkas: ‘It’s obvious’ DHS unprepared for migrant influx
Julia Johnson
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EXCLUSIVE — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) disputed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s claim that his department is prepared to take on the border following the end of Title 42.
On Sunday, Mayorkas told CNN’s Dana Bash, “We have been planning for months and months — over a year and a half. We have surged resources, asylum officers, Border Patrol agents, processing coordinators to do the data entry work so our Border Patrol agents can be out in the field. We’ve expanded our holding capacity.”
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Blackburn wasn’t convinced, however. “It is obvious that the Department of Homeland Security is not prepared for what is happening at the border. And this is still a crisis. It is a crisis every day,” she told the Washington Examiner.
According to Mayorkas, “over the past two days, the United States Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week.”
Reporter Bill Melugin called out the secretary afterward, noting that the decline can be explained by more enforcement from Mexico, Texas working to block entries, and immigrants opting to go to ports of entry. He added that the numbers are expected to increase again.
Blackburn explained, “When you look at the numbers of people, 6,000 people a day — on track to have 2.5 million migrants coming across this border this year. And that is those that are apprehended. Think about the gotaways.”
“We know that 332 terrorists have been apprehended. We know one from Afghanistan; someone on the terrorist watch list was apprehended this weekend. So that’s in the people we know. Think about who is in the ones we don’t know,” she added.
“We’ve apprehended dozens of gang members — MS-13 gang members. We have apprehended dozens of criminal aliens. We have apprehended thousands of pounds of fentanyl,” the Tennessee Republican iterated.
Blackburn further emphasized, “This administration was not prepared for this. They do not have a plan of how they’re going to handle it. But they’re turning every town into a border town and every state into a border state.”
The senator shifted her focus to fentanyl, which she explained is infiltrating communities nationwide and causing overdose deaths.
“It’s coming across the southern border,” she said.
“They don’t count all the drugs. When they tell you how much they’re apprehending, they’re not putting in that total. What Border Patrol is apprehending out and about, they’re not putting in that total. What Air and Marine Operations are apprehending, they’re not putting in that total — what your local sheriff or your police department is apprehending,” Blackburn explained.
“We are allowing the cartels who are running the Mexico side of that border to really create a humanitarian crisis in our country,” she said.
All of this, according to the senator, is evidence that “we have to secure our southern border.”
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“We have to give Border Patrol what they need, which they’ve told us for decades they need a physical barrier on the southern border. Where they can’t have that barrier, they need technology. And they need more agents and officers,” she added.
The Title 42 policy ended on May 11. The policy was a pandemic-era measure that allowed Border Patrol to expel immigrants without issuing asylum hearing dates due to concerns over communicable diseases.