On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that the fact that people can stay in the United States for years before their asylum claims are heard in immigration court is “a pull factor,” but there’s nothing more they can do on the executive side to decrease the amount of people coming to the border, including reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy.
Mayorkas said, “We need additional asylum officers to really accelerate the asylum adjudication process, so people are not waiting six years before they receive their results, which is, in effect, a pull factor, the fact that people can stay here for six years before their asylum case is adjudicated is a powerful example of how broken our immigration system is and has been for so long.”
Later, co-host Phil Mattingly asked, “When we talk about numbers, ABC News is reporting there were over 300,000 border encounters in December. CNN has reported over 225,000 were apprehensions from illegal crossings. These are record numbers. This has been a continuous trend line right now. Is there anything on the executive authority side that you haven’t done yet that you think you can that can stem this?”
Mayorkas responded, “We are focused on the fundamental solution to a long-existing problem, and that fundamental solution is legislation. We have taken actions already to build lawful pathways to deliver consequences and do what we can. We’ve promulgated regulations to do what we can within the confines of the law, but fundamentally, the laws themselves must change and this is something about which everyone agrees, and that is quite rare when one is speaking about immigration.”
In another interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mayorkas responded to a question from co-host Willie Geist on whether it’s “a good idea to let the asylum seekers be in the United States while they await a trial or should they remain where they are?” By stating that “we have sought additional asylum officers. We are going to be right-sizing that immigration agency through our regulatory authorities, but fundamentally, fundamentally, Congress must fix the broken immigration system and that case backlog is a powerful example of why that is so.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.