Mayorkas: Executive orders aren't enough to solve the migrant crisis

Source: Politico

03/03/2024 11:05 AM EST


Executive action alone cannot solve the immigration crisis at America’s southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday, urging Congress to pass legislation to alleviate the issue.

While the White House is considering all its options, Mayorkas said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “administrative action is no substitute for an enduring solution.”

“When we take administrative actions as we have done a number of times, we are challenged in court. Legislation is the enduring solution,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Dana Bash. “And by the way, we can, not, through administrative action, plus up the United States border patrol, customs and border protection by 1,500 personnel like this legislation proposes; we cannot through administrative action add 4,300 asylum officers so that we can work through the backlog and turn the system into an efficient and well working one, which it hasn’t been for more than three decades.”

Legislation seems unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, particularly after House Republicans tanked a bipartisan border bill negotiated in the Senate, with Speaker Mike Johnson declaring it dead on arrival. Former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP nominee for president, has pushed members of his party to block the bipartisan proposal, denying President Joe Biden a signature immigration policy achievement ahead of the November election.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/03/mayorkas-executive-orders-migrant-crisis-00144585