Washington — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that a bipartisan Senate proposal that would allow U.S. border agents to continue expelling migrants without court hearings is a “band-aid solution.”
“What we need is our system fixed,” Mayorkas said in an interview with “Face the Nation.” “Not this band-aid solution.”
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona introduced the bill last week that would allow the U.S. to expel migrants for two years after a pandemic-era emergency rule, known as Title 42, winds down this week.
Sinema, who was a Democrat until December 2022, accused the Biden administration of failing to “plan ahead and implement a realistic, workable plan” once Title 42 ends.
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Mayorkas said he disagrees.
“We’ve been preparing for this for quite some time,” he said. “We tried to end Title 42 repeatedly and were stopped from doing so by the courts, so we are prepared.”
In response to criticism that the administration is not doing enough to stem unlawful crossings, Mayorkas said it has been pushing for immigration legislation “since Day One.”
The Biden administration announced last month it is setting up migrant processing centers in Latin America, increasing deportations and expanding pathways to legal migration as it tries to reduce the number of unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mayorkas said processing centers in Colombia should be functional in “a matter of weeks.”
Title 42 has allowed the Trump and Biden administrations to swiftly expel migrants since March 2020 without processing their asylum claims. The policy is set to end Thursday as the national COVID-19 public health emergency expires. Officials expect migrant arrivals could spike to between 10,000 and 13,000 per day.
The administration is also sending 1,500 active-duty troops to El Paso, Texas, to provide support to Customs and Border Protection. Mayorkas said the troops will be doing office work, so that Customs and Border Protection agents can be out in the field.
Mayorkas indicated that there could be an increase in unlawful crossings once the policy expires.
“It’s going to take our plan a while to really take hold for people to understand that they can access lawful, safe, orderly pathways before they reach the border.”
Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report.
