Mayorkas says executive border action could have happened sooner if not for ‘irresponsible politics’

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted “in hindsight” that executive action could have been taken to counter the “irresponsible politics” that killed bipartisan border negotiations. 

CBS’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan pressed Mayorkas Sunday on why President Biden waited until only five months before the election to finally enact executive orders to stem the flow at the border.

Mayorkas insisted the administration pressured Congress to act on the border, continuing to blame politics for preventing border funding from being passed. 

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the administration’s border actions on “Face the Nation” Sunday. (CBS News screenshot)

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“Remember where we were when the president took office,” Mayorkas said. “We were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The prior administration had imposed Title 42, which is a public health authority, and enabled us to expel individuals, to continue to expel individuals at the border as the prior administration had done. There was tremendous pressure to maintain the workings of Title 42, which we did. That held until May of 2023.” 

He continued, “We then turned to Congress, and we asked for supplemental funding that was desperately needed to make our administration of a broken immigration system work much better. We were denied. We went back to Congress a second time and requested supplemental funding. Denied. We then turned to the bipartisan negotiations, which proved successful, which were then killed. The result of it a really terrific solution was killed by irresponsible politics.”

A bipartisan border bill failed to advance in the Senate earlier this year. (Justin Hamel/Getty Images)

The “bipartisan negotiations” referred to a Senate border bill negotiated by Republican Sen. James Lankford, Okla., and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, Conn., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz. Although the White House has largely blamed Republicans for blocking the bill from passing, the bill failed to advance in the Senate through a 43-50 vote with bipartisan opposition.  

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“Looking back now in hindsight, in 2020, if we had known that irresponsible politics would have killed what was clearly a meritorious effort and a meritorious result, perhaps we would have taken executive action more rapidly,” Mayorkas said.

Mayorkas has testified saying the border was secure despite record crossings.  (AP/Mark Schiefelbein)

As recently as April 2023, Mayorkas insisted the border was “secure,” despite record numbers of border crossings during the Biden administration. This was a claim he has repeated despite facing scorn and ridicule from Republicans.

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