Senate Republicans pushed President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for the Department of Homeland Security to state whether he would ease asylum policies to cater to migrants seeking economic help as thousands caravan from Central America to the United States.
Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee repeatedly questioned Alejandro Mayorkas during his confirmation hearing Tuesday in an attempt to see if he will detain illegal immigrants who are encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border or allow families to be released into the country.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked Mayorkas if he believed that “coming into this country illegally for economic improvement” was a valid reason to ask for asylum.
“The asylum laws are well-established, and they provide that an individual who’s fleeing persecution by reason of his or her membership in a particular social group is deserving of protection,” said Mayorkas.
“Is economic opportunity a valid reason for asylum?” asked Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican.
“My understanding is that that is not a legitimate assignment,” said Mayorkas, referring to the reasons outlined by the U.S. government as legitimate reasons to claim asylum after fleeing one’s country.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy states that refugees who have fled their country may see asylum at a port of entry or once they are in custody if they have “suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
“I would hope that we wouldn’t have different rules for people flying in from Honduras than we have illegally traveling from Honduras, because right now, we have pretty strict travel restrictions coming in if you’re flying in legally, and if somehow we have a different set of rules (it’s lax if you’re traveling, you’re illegally [entering]) that would be quite a quandary for us to be able to explain to everyone,” said Lankford.
Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, pushed the former Obama-era DHS official on whether Border Patrol would detain or release into the U.S. people who are arrested after illegally crossing the border, but Mayorkas spoke vaguely, not making promises.
“[If] people qualify under the law to remain in the United States, then we will apply the law accordingly,” Mayorkas said. “If they do not qualify to remain in the United States, then they won’t stay here.”
The Republican senators’ concerns come in the midst of rising arrests at the southern border and a 9,000-person caravan traversing Central America on its way to Mexico before reaching the U.S. Johnson, the previous committee chairman, tried to push Mayorkas to give the specific point at which the number of people arrested daily by Border Patrol would be considered a “crisis.”
“Secretary [Jeh] Johnson, who you served under, said that 1,000 people per day was a bad day. We have been consistently over 2,000 a day for the last number of years, over 4,000 a day in March 2019. Right now, we’re back over 2,000 per day,” said Sen. Ron Johnson. “Do you consider that a problem what is going to be a bad day if you’re secretary?”
He then asked Mayorkas to state for the record that the Obama administration erected a massive Border Patrol detention facility in McAllen, Texas. Mayorkas confirmed that the facility, lamented by congressional Democrats during the Trump administration, was put up before Trump.
“That’s the same facility that has the chain-link fences that people on the other side of the aisle have referred to as putting children in cages, correct?” Johnson asked.
Mayorkas agreed, and Johnson asked if the facility was created because a rising number of families and children were coming over the southern border in the early and mid-2010s. Mayorkas defended it and said federal law enforcement “existed long before” the one building was stood up.
Of the 475,000 people who were arrested at the southern border with a family member during the government’s fiscal 2019 year, roughly three-quarters did not seek asylum and were released into the U.S.
Biden has vowed to end a slew of asylum reforms that the Trump administration implemented in an effort to deter the number of people who come to the U.S. border.
