Alejandro Mayorkas has failed his country

For nearly a year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been under investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security for his failure to uphold and enforce our nation’s laws. As a member of this committee, I’ve been vocal about my concern for his dereliction of duty and how it has threatened the safety of communities in my district and across the nation.

Through the testimony of victims of the border crisis, Department of Homeland Security documents produced under threat of subpoena, and hearings with expert witnesses, our investigation has shown that Mayorkas has implemented policies that harm every state, whether through crimes committed by illegal immigrants, costs to local government, or the influx of fentanyl. The evidence is clear: Mayorkas’s open border policies have hurt all people, including the Floridians I represent.

Mayorkas has intentionally failed to secure the homeland and must be held accountable.

This is not a disagreement over policy. He has ignored laws passed by Congress, disregarded court orders, and reversed good policies that protected the southern border in the past. Mayorkas has failed to fulfill the basic functions of his office. That’s why I proudly supported the committee’s initiation of impeachment proceedings against him.

One offense of many that I am unwilling to overlook is Mayorkas’s willful endangerment of children.

Under Section 235 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, or TVPRA, DHS must work with the Department of Health and Human Services agencies to develop “policies and procedures to ensure that unaccompanied alien children in the United States are safely repatriated to their country of nationality or of last habitual residence.”

The same day the Senate confirmed Mayorkas to his position as secretary, the Biden administration announced that unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, would not be expelled under Title 42. He also said on television that DHS would not expel UACs who entered the country illegally. Naturally, the cartels and human smuggling organizations took note.

More than 430,000 UACs have crossed the southern border under Mayorkas’s watch — a historic number that has a significant impact on our schools and healthcare systems, many of which are already understaffed and underresourced.

Not only is Mayorkas not repatriating UACs to their home country, as is required by the TVPRA, but he is not even ensuring these migrant children are placed in safe homes with vetted sponsors.

In March 2023, a Florida grand jury found that the Biden administration doesn’t coordinate or consult with Florida state officials when unaccompanied children are moved here. Instead, UACs are dropped off via planes in the middle of the night and left with largely unvetted sponsors.

And the New York Times has shown the Biden administration has lost track of approximately 85,000 UACs inside our country. Based on witness testimony before our committee, many of these children are being exploited.

Meanwhile, DHS has also stopped working to ensure that children who come with families are actually related to those who claim to be their parents.

In 2019, Customs and Border Protection began conducting DNA testing of family units at the southern border to prevent illegal immigrants from “renting” children to pose as a family unit.

However, since taking office, Mayorkas scaled down the use of DNA testing for family units and, under his leadership, CBP allowed a testing contract to expire so that testing was only done when deemed necessary, according to the department. In other words, hardly at all.

Now, criminals wishing to take advantage of lax border policies can pretend they are fathers of children and get a green light to enter our country, resulting in vulnerable children suffering from exploitation.

Think of how this plays out in Florida. In August, Florida state and federal law enforcement conducted a sting operation of child sex traffickers in Bay County. Officials determined that 26% of the people arrested had entered the U.S. illegally.

Because Mayorkas refuses to do his job, innocent children are suffering. Florida’s children are less safe because of Mayorkas’s open borders policies.

Before I came to Congress, I was a prosecutor and a judge. I prosecuted criminals and made sure the rule of law was upheld. At this point, I’ve seen enough. We’ve reached our breaking point. That is why I voted to impeach Mayorkas.

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