A top Republican lawmaker is ordering Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to provide key documents pertaining to illegal migrants encountered at the southern border who have potential ties to terrorism.
House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green issued the subpoena to Mayorkas on Friday, requiring him to hand over all “documents and communications” since Jan. 20, 2021, that could shed light on the matter. The chairman is accusing Mayorkas of slow-walking requests for information about the number of suspected terrorists illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a letter from Green.
Green says that for over a year, Mayorkas has failed to fully comply with the requests for specific documents and information relating to gotaways and other illegal migrants on the terrorist screening database since the beginning of the Biden administration.
“President Biden and his now-impeached DHS secretary’s refusal to secure our borders or comply with our laws is putting our country in rapidly growing peril,” Green said in a public statement. “The Biden administration has utterly failed to safeguard the American people by allowing millions of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the country with limited screening and vetting, including tens of thousands of special interest aliens.”
Green, along with Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and Oversight Chairman James Comer, first requested the information from Mayorkas on May 19, 2023, according to the letter. The DHS has since failed to provide satisfactory documentation, despite multiple other requests over the year.
The subpoena follows an ongoing immigration crisis along the southern border. More than 7 million migrants have crossed illegally into the United States since President Joe Biden first entered office, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“Amid the chaos, Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden have also allowed nearly two million gotaways to evade an overwhelmed Border Patrol and roam free in American communities, presenting an almost impossible challenge for the dedicated federal law enforcement who are working tirelessly to find a growing number of needles in an ever-expanding haystack,” Green stated.
Since the beginning of fiscal year 2021, there have been more than 370 foreign nationals on the terrorist watchlist that have been apprehended attempting to unlawfully cross the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Green. The sharp rise in suspected terrorists represents a more than 3,000% increase from the Trump administration.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
