Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas took a slightly tougher tone in his latest plea with migrants, asking them to wait weeks to months before traveling to the southern border.
“Do not come,” Mayorkas said in an interview with CBS News’s This Morning on Thursday. “It is ‘do not come,’ but while we are rebuilding the system that was dismantled by the prior administration, we will make the conditions as safe as possible for the children, whom we are not expelling.”
The Biden administration anticipates more than 117,000 children without parents will attempt to enter the United States from Mexico this year, a staggering number that is higher than the previous records set in 2014 and 2019.
REPUBLICANS GRILL MAYORKAS IN HEATED HEARING ON STATE OF THE BORDER
The Department of Homeland Security warned this week that the U.S. is on pace to see its largest wave of migrants in two decades.
DHS Secretary @AliMayorkas joins us to discuss the surge and the Biden administration’s plans for handling it. pic.twitter.com/F935jssM6m
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 18, 2021
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Republicans criticized Mayorkas in his first post-confirmation hearing before Congress on Wednesday, saying the language that he used during a White House briefing on March 1 encouraged people to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time, Mayorkas said, “We are not saying don’t come, we’re saying don’t come now.”
