![Mayorkas-Speech Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas delivers remarks and introduces President Joe Biden at an event commemorating the 20th anniversary of DHS, Wednesday, March 1, 2023, at the DHS St. Elizabeth’s Campus in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)](https://static-asset.amac.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/29111045/Mayorkas-Speech.jpg)
The Biden administration would have you believe that its purportedly “safe, orderly, and humane” immigration policy comes at no cost to you, the American citizen. But the truth is just another casualty of its open border agenda.
Joe Biden has presided over an unprecedented degradation of U.S. sovereignty, as our laws no longer determine who gets in. Instead, aliens do—just by showing up. This loss of sovereignty at the border can literally apply to territory as well: Recently, the Texas Department of Public Safety had to move Mexican cartel gunmen off Fronton Island in the middle of the Rio Grande.
Since January 2021, the Biden Department of Homeland Security has abandoned the effort to deter, detain, and deport illegal aliens in favor of letting in as many as Congress will fund. This “Mayorkas Migration Machine” (I named it after our feckless secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas) grinds away nationally and locally, from the border town of McAllen, Texas (which I just visited), to up north and our failing big cities. And the bills are coming due.
In New York, the homeless shelters are full and city officials are running out of makeshift places to put the relentless stream of illegal aliens. Mayor Eric Adams has announced cuts to city services on which citizens rely—including police, education, and libraries—to pay to feed and house them, and the City Council seems likely to approve them.
Chicago plans to build a giant tent camp to hold 2,000 of the illegal aliens waiting for free housing. This will cost over $30 million, on top of the $250 million the city already spent this year on illegal aliens, such as those who are housed in a K-12 school.
Locals are outraged—maybe because, according to Fox News, other migrant shelters in the city have been prone to “loitering, engaging in late-night partying, prostitution, littering, and even fighting with community members.” Chicago’s budget for 2024 is already half a billion in the red, but taxpayers, not illegal aliens, will pay this cost. When the city says “equity,” it means treating newly arrived aliens who’ve never paid taxes better than Chicagoans.
Massachusetts, a “sanctuary” state nicknamed “Taxachussetts” for its historically high taxes, finally capped its free housing of illegal aliens at 7,500 people. But they keep coming. Boston’s Logan Airport has been informally housing families flown from the border for months.
The airport’s manager gave the excuse that “they’re paying passengers”—but who’s paying? All of us are, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and numerous other government grants paid to nongovernmental organizations that transport, shelter, feed, advise, and provide other “wrap-around” services to illegal aliens coming to the U.S.
Local Texans used to swim, boat, and recreate on the Rio Grande near McAllen. No longer. On a recent fact-finding mission, I visited the Hidalgo County water pumping station, which owns property on the river. Its employees have been shot at by cartel thugs on the other side.
The river was devoid of civilian traffic. Cartels battle each other for control of the Mexican side and the lucrative payoffs from illegal aliens crossing through their turf. Dead bodies—executed victims of the narco-traffic wars—regularly wash up on the banks. The water authority had to install a screen to keep the corpses out of its pumps.
Drug cartels have sabotaged Border Patrol boats by stringing cables underwater to destroy outboard engines and at head height to kill or injure American officers. The Border Patrol boats now use water-jet engines and are equipped with twin wires from the bow to the top of the command box to divert strung cables.
At the airport in McAllen, I saw several families who appeared to be from Haiti camped out on the floor, waiting for their free flight north. Sources at the airport told me that 100 such people go through security and board flights every day with nothing more than their Notice to Appear—a letter from DHS telling them to go to immigration court at some point in the future—as identification. The Transportation Security Administration is required to accept this worthless document from foreigners, although you and I need a “Real ID” such as a state driver’s license or passport to board a plane.
An airline employee told me that her early morning flight to Dallas is usually half full of women and children from the border. That plane holds about 160 people. That’s just for one flight, one airline, one border airport, one day.
On my early afternoon flight to Dallas, I sat across from two young men with neat clothes, Puma sneakers, and fashionable haircuts, both incessantly on their late-model phones. They had Haitian passports and the telltale folders of travel itineraries and documents given by nongovernmental organizations to released illegal aliens for their onward journeys further into the U.S.
Who were they? What did they do back in Haiti?
I have no idea, and neither does DHS. Haiti’s government is feckless, and civil order has given way to high levels of murder, theft, and kidnapping. But although many poor Haitians are victims of all this, someone is doing the murdering, too. So how does DHS know the two guys on my plane and thousands more like them who it lets in each week are average citizens or victims and not the perpetrators fleeing the consequences of their own crimes?
It doesn’t.
Lacking any way to verify identities and check foreign criminal records in most cases, DHS is forced to trust the information provided by people who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by lying. It is a statistical certainty that some of the millions paroled in or released at the border will have committed acts at home that render them legally ineligible to be admitted into the United States. The high risk of this percentage of aliens re-offending is now borne by the American communities into which DHS is sending them.
To take but one example, in July 2023, Border Patrol caught a 25-year-old man entering the U.S. illegally in Hidalgo, gave him his Notice to Appear, and let him go. Three months later, Boston police arrested him for assaulting a member of his family—probably before he even made his first immigration court appearance. Did he have a criminal record in Haiti that could have warned DHS or Boston police that he had a history of violence? It’s too late to ask now.
In recent testimony before the Senate, Mayorkas claimed that he had paroled into the U.S. over 240,000 aliens on a “case by case” rather than blanket basis. This is simply not credible. He’s just rolling the dice on the safety of the American people.
The cold hard truth is, Biden’s policies have surrendered control of our borders to Mexican cartels and illegal aliens and foisted all the ensuing costs and risks onto our taxpayers.
Simon Hankinson, a former foreign service officer with the State Department, is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Simon Hankinson
When I see Mayorkas in a hearing patiently answering questions while smirking over the success of his treasonous acts I want to scream. Wake up!
It makes me sick knowing that we the people, the employers of all these so called officials and leaders, have to pay them while they actively plot to destroy us, and if we so much as speak up against them we are labeled domestic white supremacists, or racists. We are living in an upside down, inside out world. Feels like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
I still cannot believe eight Republicans voted against impeaching this jerk! There are eight Republicans that are on the take. Might as well be a Democrat.
This article is of great importance – I appreciate it because I appreciate freedom. Praise for the BorderLine and the Daily Signal — you are doing important work Mr. Hankinson. Standards are of value in most endeavors – so there needs to be some major effort made to do something about standards in any branch of government that should be keeping the borders secure. The idea of craftsmanship involves attention to detail, regard for proper procedure, and making things that are of high quality.That is needed, that sort of spirit is needed by government agencies involved with keeping the borders secure. My praise for everyone connected with the Daily Signal — Well done with this article Simon – in the spirit of God bless America , land of the free and the home of the brave . With respect.
Why is no one looking at “the big guy” for how much $$ is flowing from the cartels to the Biden coffers?
Biden should retire to China. And take his cronies with him
You mean not all is well with Haiti? Seems to me there were 5 billion dollars to help it Was the money not spent on necessary projects? Was any of it used for that purpose and if not Why? Where is it? does anyone know or care? All was very quiet on that front from the very beginning Would not shock me if Clintons had their sticky fingers in that pot
Now the Biden administration is looking the other way on his illegals crossing our northern border too.
Great. The population of LA has crossed the border since Biden assumed rule. If we’re not going to defend America from “all threats, domestic or external” and allow them to destroy us, at least don’t re-elect it!
Hillary shrilled about open borders and now look at Bidet.Samo crap spewing.
This illegal immigration crap is so out of control from the democrats it has turned me into such a disgusted American who is thankful that my parents and grandparents are not alive to witness how the America they loved is being destroyed.
I am sick of all the gutless creatures we have in Congress. House & Senate. Half the people in the DC Swamp should be tried for treason. The FEW in the Swamp that do Mention treason are slapped around and told to shut up. Last election I voted for change in the Republican Primary on every office up for election, but the majority of folks in my district just voted for the same old do nothing people because they put out a good appearance of working hard “for the people”. I could go on for paragraphs, but I’m stopping here.
What is wrong with this country has Washington gone mad letting this guy run our border he lets and person in then he is dumb enough to ship them all over this country then they get mad when Texas said enough is enough people there are sick and tired of our government and this guy they are killing this country with all the undocumented people running the streets of this country. Every state run by Dems is going downhill with corruption something needs to happen we need better leadership in this country and better people in the White House on down.