Mayorkas keeps rolling. Some Senate Republicans are calling for a Feb. 13 trial on the House impeachment charge, but the impeachment charge appears to lack all the evidence needed for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and is almost entirely false. It will fail without fail. President Biden called the travesty a “blatant unconstitutional partisan act targeting honorable public servants for petty political maneuvering.”
But beneath Mr. Mayorkas’ case lies a deeper story about why this country can’t solve its border problems. It’s a story in which Democrats bear almost as much responsibility as Republicans for failing to repair a clearly broken system. This explanation comes from sources inside and outside the government who have been working closely with Mr. Mayorkas as the impeachment train wreck approaches.
The president has wanted to be anti-Trump on immigration since Inauguration Day. After four years of brutal scenes at the border, Biden wanted to signal change and respond to the Hispanic voters who helped elect him.
Unfortunately, Biden threw out the baby with the bath water. He announced a 100-day suspension of deportations, but it was quickly overturned in court. He disparaged physical barriers along the border that could resemble President Donald Trump’s infamous “wall.” And he shunned policies reminiscent of President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” stance toward closing the border. Politically, immigrants were the losers. Biden largely distanced himself from it.
It was a troubling situation for Mayorkas. He took the job running the Department of Homeland Security in 2021 knowing a new legislative framework was needed, but it is unlikely to pass a bitterly divided Congress. This means that DHS, which lacks the necessary legal authority and resources, is using an overburdened system that takes 5 to 7 years to process claims, while disqualifying people from asylum status in order to get a job in the United States. This means that immigrants who apply will inevitably have a hard time.
As one Mayorkas aide put it, DHS was in a “catcher’s mitt.” By the time the migrants reached the border, it was too late for a good solution. The asylum system leans toward admitting people with a low bar of entry, requiring only that they show a “credible fear,” and DHS officials say about 75 percent of such applicants receive initial exemptions. He told me he was there. When their cases are finally heard by immigration judges, only about 20 percent are approved.
You can’t blame immigrants for crossing broken fences. Immigrating illegally gave them jobs, decent housing, and an escape from the harsh conditions in their homeland. And it made good business sense. Migrants who pay $10,000 to smugglers are granted refugee status and can work in the United States for at least five years while awaiting trial, all the while sending money to poor relatives. This meant a net profit for them, but it overwhelmed some of the U.S. cities and states where they arrived.
“The fundamental problem we have is that our laws and lack of funding make it difficult for the U.S. government to quickly review and deport people who came here as economic immigrants and do not have a legitimate asylum claim. You can’t do that,” said Susan Rice, who worked with Mr. Mayorkas on immigration issues. When she headed Biden’s domestic policy council, she told me:
Mayorkas and Rice wanted a new approach to stop the flow before it reaches the border. Mr. Biden also supported this in principle. But his administration has been unable to get the job done, an example of how good ideas can be smothered by inertia and interagency conflict.
In 2021, Mayorkas asked the State Department to create facilities overseas known as “safe relocation centers” where immigrants could file asylum claims and receive speedy adjudication without the need for endless judicial reviews. I requested that. The State Department agreed in principle and pledged last May to open 100 such centers. Almost a year later, that number is down to just four: Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala. Although it has helped stem the flow from these countries, the number of migrants from elsewhere has skyrocketed.
Frankly, the State Department had other priorities besides immigration. A Foreign Service employee does not earn points for assisting his DHS.
That also applied to the Department of Justice. Administration officials say Mr. Mayorkas is implementing Sections 1325 and 1326 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which impose criminal penalties of up to six months for those who cross the border illegally and up to 20 years for those who cross the border illegally. He said he has requested judicial authorities more than a dozen times to prosecute more cases under the Article. He crosses again and again. “It’s fair to say that [the] “The Justice Department did not prioritize prosecuting people who made multiple attempts,” said a former government official.
Vice President Harris was given the politically unrewarding task of curbing the influx of refugees from Central America. When she visited Guatemala in June 2021, she said frankly: “I want to be very clear to people in this region who are considering making the perilous journey to the U.S.-Mexico border: Don’t come. Don’t come.” That was a valid policy statement, but Harris said: was attacked by immigration advocates, and the White House basically left her hanging. That may have been the moment when Vice President Harris began to lose his temper.
Part of the Democratic failure was that when Biden took office, border security remained a largely red-state issue that seemed to offer little upside for Democrats. That began to change last year when immigrants began pouring into Democratic cities like Denver, Chicago and New York. But in the early months of his administration, that burden fell on Mr. Mayorkas.
An early test occurred in March 2021, when thousands of unaccompanied children began overwhelming crowded Border Patrol stations. The Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for the care of these minors. But Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the agency’s first Latina head, has raised the ratio of children to 8 counselors in Health and Human Services to get more children out of crowded and dangerous border stations. When I was told to increase it to 1:1, I became cautious.
Mr. Becerra’s first reaction was to ask the president to put it in writing, recalled one participant in a White House meeting with the president on the matter. At the next meeting, a “quietly exasperated” Mayorkas told Biden that Homeland’s child-to-supervisor ratio was 175 to 1. Biden ordered Becerra to increase the HHS ratio to 12:1. “If you’re willing to take the risk,” Becerra agreed, one participant recalled.
Biden said he intended to do so, but some attendees wondered if he was angry with the Health and Human Services secretary. Rice scribbled a memo to Mayorkas during one meeting where Becerra was in the top seat. “Don’t save him,” she advised, according to someone who read this. But Mr. Mayorkas has addressed the issue, deploying hundreds of Homeland workers to help care for unaccompanied minors in HHS facilities.
HHS spokesman Jeff Nesbitt responded: “While we worked with DHS to respond quickly, licensed child care beds cannot be set up overnight under any circumstances, much less during a pandemic.” We continue to work closely with our colleagues at DHS and across the federal government to serve the children in our care. ”
A former Biden administration official involved in immigration policy acknowledged that there was “some tension” between Biden and both Cabinet members over the issue, but he said HHS is currently dealing with The number of unaccompanied children is less than 1,000 per month, he said. First month of 2021.
Over the past decade, some progressive Democrats have advocated seemingly untenable positions on immigration issues, as if they believed the very existence of borders and control systems, including deportations, to be unjust and immoral. Sometimes it sounded like. Mr. Mayorkas encountered that impasse last May when he spoke at a gathering of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
He worked there until an immigrant who entered the United States and received asylum waivers could have his claim heard in a backlog of courts, where it was ultimately denied and a deportation order granted. , described a hypothetical situation that is too typical. “What should we do?” Mayorkas asked.
“There was complete silence,” recalled one attendee. One immigrant advocate responded, “This system is unfair.” That seemed to mean that empathy for immigrants should take precedence over the law.
This argument for expanding immigrant rights is expressed in a new outline of Humanitarian Solutions that Work released this week by the National Immigrant Justice Center. The group opposed a “punitive, coercive approach to immigration policy” that “demonizes people seeking safety and a better life.”
The terrible irony of Mr. Mayorkas’ story is that this year Congress came close to accomplishing what Mr. Mayorkas thought impossible in 2021. That means passing smart immigration reform that provides clearer legal standards and more resources, all at once for America. , humane policies and secure borders. The bipartisan compromise stalled in the 11th hour after President Donald Trump signaled he wanted fewer reforms than those enacted during Biden’s presidency.
Mr. Mayorkas’ impeachment quickly followed. When Mayorkas toured the Munich Security Conference last weekend, he seemed unfazed. Mayorkas’ friend and former deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, summed up Mayorkas’ story this way: Only to face accusations of hypocrisy from those who can quickly resolve this. ”