DHS secretary details 'dramatic' drop in 'migrant encounters' under Biden-Harris border policy

13 September 2024

Former President Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans have been attacking Vice President Kamala Harris relentlessly for the Biden Administration's U.S./Mexico border policies, often blaming her for the influx of migrants into the United States.

But Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended Harris and President Joe Biden's border record during a podcast interview with The New York Times' Ezra Klein.

Mayorkas explained, "We’ve seen an unprecedented level of displacement around the world. It's the greatest level of displacement since at least World War 2. And the United States came out of the pandemic more rapidly than did other countries in our hemisphere. The economy recovered more rapidly. So not only were the forces of displacement present — and some unprecedented — but the attraction of the United States was greatest."

Mayorkas noted that "smuggling operations" on the United States' southern border have become more sophisticated than they were in the past, and the Biden Administration coped with an "old system" that needed to be updated.

"I think that the problem has gotten worse," Mayorkas told Klein. "The system is not built for a higher volume of people. So the pre-existing architecture just continues to break, and the backlogs continue to increase, and they increased in the prior administration, and they have increased now, of course, until this administration took certain actions."

According to Mayorkas, the Biden Administration took "a number of measures" because the "status quo" was inadequate.

Mayorkas noted, "First, we sought, by way of regulation, to empower asylum officers, rather than immigration judges that are burdened by overwhelming dockets, to make the asylum adjudications. The next major measure that we took was the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways regulation that said that if one does not avail oneself of the lawful pathways that we have built, there will be a presumption — albeit a rebuttable one — but a presumption of ineligibility for asylum."

The volume of migrants, according to Mayorkas, has "dropped dramatically."

The Homeland Security Department secretary told Klein, "The number of individuals encountered at the southern border has dropped more than 50 percent. The current rate of encounter is lower than — the rate of encounter at the same time this year as in 2019 — lower than in 2019. But we've seen a more than 50 percent drop in the number of encounters, day to day. Dramatic."

Ezra Klein's full interview with Alejandro Mayorkas is available at this link (subscription required).

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