Pharr, Texas.– Inside a classroom of a school almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border of the United States (EU) with Mexico, the Republicans of the House orchestrated a television moment this month for which they traveled to this place , getting a high-ranking immigration official to agree that the United States government has to prevent migrants from crossing the country without authorization.
“No, sir,” Raúl L. Ortiz, head of the United States Border Patrol, responded to members of the Homeland Security Committee when asked if the US government “had operational control” of the border.
The answer might seem obvious at a time when several tens of thousands of migrants are showing up at the border each month, though for Republicans, for whom attacking the Joe Biden administration on immigration is a top priority. — and indicting Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, an unwavering commitment — was worth the trip of more than 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) from Washington.
contradictions
Republicans flaunted Ortiz’s statement, which appears to be contradicted by testimony Mayorkas gave to another congressional panel last year, and which was reproduced over and over again by conservative media outlets.
Although the US government has long lacked a consistent definition of what makes the border secure, Republican Rep. Mark E. Green of Tennessee, chair of the panel, seized on the apparent discrepancy, compromising on Fox News to question each head of the border sector to “investigate whether Mayorkas lied or not.”
This is the kind of spectacle Republicans have been trying to create ever since they won control of the House, vowing to scrutinize what they say is a “border crisis” spawned by President Joe’s lax enforcement of the law. Biden and Mayorkas.
In the past two months, Republicans on at least four committees and subcommittees have sent delegations to the border, pouring taxpayer resources into three field hearings, among other places, to draw attention to their message and generate the media coverage that drives your narrative.
no visual evidence
During patrols prior to those congressional outings, Republicans had struggled to obtain visual evidence of the crisis.
Last month, members of the Judiciary Committee did not see any arrests in Yuma, Arizona, making them ridiculous to Democrats, who have been boycotting their trips.
Republicans on the Homeland Security panel reported only one this month, near Pharr.
But the lack of physical evidence hasn’t deterred Republicans from piling the blame for the country’s border challenges on the feet of Mayorkas, who is expected to come under more fire from Republicans when he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
“This secretary of the Department of Homeland Security wants nothing more than to flood the country with people,” Green said at his Committee meeting this month.
He said the increase in border crossings, the growth of cartels and the domestic fentanyl epidemic had happened “because of Mayorkas’ decisions, incompetence and dishonesty.”
A very different reality
Just a few miles from where the Republicans met, the reality at the border was very different from what was presented at the field hearing.
After peaking at 250,000 in December, the number of encounters between officers and migrants at the southern border has begun to decline, falling by about 40 percent last January, and steadily holding those levels through February.
Homeland Security officials, including Ortiz, have credited a number of deterrence initiatives, including new projects to strengthen border infrastructure, increased interdictions and an increase in flights to return migrants to their country of origin. .
“We have not heard that they are crossing as frequently as they did, it has been very, very slow,” said Lourdes González. She runs a small shelter in a run-down neighborhood of Reynosa, a city on the Mexican side of the border, just across from Pharr, that cares for migrants with traumatic and medical conditions.
reviews on amayan
The slow pace has not calmed criticism from Republicans. Usually, they mention the total number of encounters between migrants and border agents since Biden began his term –4.7 million– and the 1.3 million who have presumably “escaped”, that is, people who have crossed the border and have not been apprehended by the officers.
Republicans say those numbers have far exceeded the totals during President Donald Trump’s tenure.
Democrats say the Republicans’ strategy on those issues is part of the reason they have boycotted his trips to the border, dismissing his efforts to score political points by putting on a show.
“They’re not interested in solutions,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who led a separate delegation of Democrats from the Judiciary Committee to the same area of the border several days after the Republicans left.
His main focus
Republicans have said they are willing to talk about increasing funding for the Department of Homeland Security, but their main goal has been to focus on Mayorkas, who they accuse of mismanaging the resources at his disposal and negligent in asking him for to Congress the necessary increases for his department’s budget.
“He either lied to Congress or he’s incompetent, and those two things are not good,” Green said of Mayorkas.
However, there has been a small and real difference between their statements. In declaring the border secure, Mayorkas has usually relied on variations to the standard that Border Patrol defined in 2007 as “the ability to detect, respond to, and prevent border penetration in areas that are considered high priority.”
Although Ortiz used a statutory definition, displayed on a sign behind Green during the hearing: “the prevention of all illegal entries into the United States.”
The Department of Homeland Security has defended its handling of the challenges, arguing that the Biden administration inherited what a spokesman called “a dismantled immigration system” and has faced “unprecedented migration.”
A moderate decline
40% Approximately the encounters between border agents and immigrants fell from December to January last
250 mil cases were registered during the last month of 2022, reaching its peak
republican arguments
4.7 millions of encounters have been reported so far in Biden’s term
1.3 millions of observed migrants presumably managed to flee border agents
