This week, House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee will complete their rushed, baseless and legally flawed impeachment “investigation” of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for trumped-up, never-used charges relating to the secretary’s efforts to secure our southern border. The irony here, of course, is that the ones who have failed to secure the southern border are, in fact, those same Republicans, operating at the behest of Donald Trump.
As one senior congressional aide recently put it: “It’s very clear that a large group of Republicans in the Senate and the House no longer want to do border security. … Trump wouldn’t have his issue to run on. That’s what’s going on here: They don’t want to give up that issue.”
Keep in mind, that aide who so succinctly summed up the ongoing border legislation negotiations is a Republican, not a Democrat.
Democrats and Republicans agree that the situation at the border is untenable and needs reform. But it looks like only one party wants to actually address that situation: the Democratic Party.
Democrats, led by Mayorkas and President Joe Biden, have been working around the clock for the past two months with a bipartisan group of senators to address the issues at the border through bipartisan legislation — which Republicans have insisted on as a condition for providing aid to our democratic allies around the world. As Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., has recognized, the border policy package that is near agreement in the Senate would include more Republican priorities than have ever been passed or would ever be achieved under a Republican administration.
In a recent closed-door meeting with his Senate Republican colleagues, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky reportedly shared “that the party used to be united in finding a solution” but that the politics “have changed” and Trump “wants the issue [of border security] for his 2024 campaign more than an actual solution.”
This goes beyond your regular election-year political cynicism. For the entire 118th Congress, I have witnessed firsthand House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee using security concerns at the southern border as a political cudgel without making any effort in a divided government to reach across the aisle to actually solve problems through bipartisan legislation. And make no mistake, legislation — not executive action — is the only way to fix our broken immigration system.
Even within its limited executive authority, the Biden administration has taken several actions to address the situation at the border by streamlining the asylum process while expediting eligibility decisions, preventing unlawful entry between ports of entry and reducing the pressure on the system by allowing people from specific countries suffering from acute humanitarian problems to gain lawful access under certain limiting conditions.
In response to these efforts, Republican attorneys general around the country sued the Biden administration to prevent the implementation of these policy changes designed to stop the unlawful entry of migrants across the southern border and stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum.
Think about that: The Republicans are working to create and perpetuate the very problems upon which they are basing their impeachment effort of Mayorkas.
In October, the Biden administration requested supplemental funding to add asylum officers to process the backlog of asylum claims, add more immigration judges to adjudicate the backlog of cases, add more immigration and law enforcement officials to keep the border orderly and secure and add advanced technology designed to prevent fentanyl and human trafficking over the border.
House Republicans flatly rejected this request.
Those of us in Congress who represent districts in New York City, among other cities around the country, are keenly aware of the immediate need to address our broken immigration system and for the federal government to reimburse cities and localities for immigration-related expenditures. That is why we Democrats applauded Biden’s request to add $1.4 billion to the Shelter and Services Program, the only program within the Department of Homeland Security specifically designed for that purpose.
In New York, this support for additional federal funding for immigration is bipartisan. At a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on Dec. 5, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, agreed that the federal government should provide more funding to reimburse cities and states for immigration costs.
Yet House Republicans want to eliminate that program entirely.
House Republicans, at the urging and direction of Trump, have declared that any border security bill passed by the Senate is dead on arrival in the House.
Republicans undermined or outright rejected every Democratic effort to address the border situation through policy and legislative fixes prior to the recent bipartisan negotiations in the Senate, which Republicans have called the best deal available in 30 years. Yet House Republicans, at the urging and direction of Trump, have declared that any border security bill passed by the Senate is dead on arrival in the House.
Democrats and Republicans agree that the situation at the border is untenable and needs reform. But it looks like only one party wants to actually address that situation: the Democratic Party.
Democrats, led by Biden and Mayorkas, have consistently tried to address the problems at the southern border and have demonstrated an unprecedented willingness to compromise with Republicans to do so.
Republicans, on the other hand, have shamelessly undermined every attempt by the administration to address the border. Worse yet, House Republicans and Trump have brazenly and shockingly asserted that they oppose any legislation because they view the chaos at the border as their best election-year issue.
To put it simply, Republicans would prefer to have chaos at the border than actually solve our border problems —because they care more about winning elections than finding solutions for the American people.
