WASHINGTON — Republicans on Capitol Hill offered a preview this week of how they plan to attack the Biden administration’s immigration policies as the midterm elections approach, trying to make the homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, accept blame for a historic spike in migration across the southwest border.During more than eight hours of testimony and at times heated exchanges over two days of hearings on Capitol Hill, Mr. Mayorkas did no such thing. “I feel that America needs you to own this thing, good sir,” Representative Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, said on Wednesday during a hearing conducted by the House Homeland Security Committee. “Speak to the American people and own this thing. We’re losing our country down there. We need you to resign.”During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, said his constituents think Mr. Mayorkas has committed treason and should be impeached.Mr. Mayorkas shot back, “What you have just said is so profoundly offensive on so many different levels, in so many different regards. I won’t ask you for an apology.”The stark ideological differences over immigration are nothing new, but a once-obscure public health rule used to restrict immigration during the pandemic has become the face of the issue as its end date, May 23, approaches.ImageRepresentative Matt Gaetz of Florida and other Republicans pressed Mr. Mayorkas during the hearings.Credit...Al Drago for The New York TimesAlthough the stated purpose of the rule, known as Title 42, is to limit the spread of the coronavirus in Border Patrol facilities and border towns, Republicans and even some moderate Democrats now see it as a potent tool for controlling immigration as Congress continues to punt on passing comprehensive changes to the country’s immigration laws.Several Republican-led states have filed a lawsuit seeking to keep the public health rule in place.The number of migrants who crossed the southern border without documentation has increased since President Biden took office. March set a record for the most crossings in a single month in decades: 221,303. The inflow has at times overwhelmed border officials, who lament being stuck indoors doing the paperwork to process migrants instead of patrolling the hundreds of miles of border the service is responsible for protecting.Despite the public health rule, the Biden administration has allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country to face deportation proceedings, mostly families with young children. The Trump administration also allowed in large numbers of migrants during a spike in migration in 2019. Many new arrivals apply for asylum, a process that can take six to eight years but that allows them to wait in the United States for a decision.Read More About U.S. Immigration
At the Border: Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas hoped to crack down on smuggling with safety inspections. Facing snarled traffic and political backlash, he had to backtrack.‘Remain in Mexico’ Program: The Supreme Court is hearing arguments over whether the Biden administration can end a policy forcing asylum seekers to await approval in Mexico.Undocumented Immigrants: As it ends contracts and looks to reduce bed capacity at detention facilities, the government appears to be moving away from incarcerations.Trump-Era Policies: President Biden vowed to unravel Trump-era immigration rules. Disagreements inside the White House have complicated that effort.Title 42 gives Border Patrol agents the authority to expel people without asking whether they are afraid to return to the country they came from, a process that takes significantly longer.Lifting the rule, critics say, will lead to a collapse of operational control along the southwest border.When it was put in place at the beginning of the pandemic, the end was presumed to be in sight for the public health emergency, which would trigger the lifting of the rule. It has been long assumed that lifting it would drive up the number of undocumented migrants crossing the southwest border.Earlier this year, the Biden administration was under intense pressure from Democrats to lift the rule, since the pandemic had reached a phase with relatively few hospitalizations and cases of serious illness.At the end of March, the Department of Homeland Security released a 16-page operations plan for the southwest border that laid out how the government would respond to an increase in migration; the plan said officials were preparing for as many as 18,000 migrants a day.Days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it would lift the emergency rule later this spring, drawing outrage from Republicans as well as some Democrats whose seats are vulnerable in theBy: Eileen Sullivan
Title: Republicans Blame Homeland Security Secretary for Spike in Migration
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/us/politics/homeland-security-secretary-migration.html
Published Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 22:54:55 +0000
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