From ground zero of the US immigration crisis, Mayorkas in Texas calls on Congress to act

EAGLE PASS — The Biden administration's homeland security chief came to the Texas-Mexico border Monday to witness firsthand the widening immigration crisis that has overwhelmed local and state authorities, and he called on Congress to enact a comprehensive solution.

And he tacitly acknowledged that the administration's messaging on the topic has been subpar.

"Our immigration system is outdated and broken, and has been in need of reform for literally decades on this. Everyone agrees," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters inside a Border Patrol regional headquarters 13 miles from the Rio Grande.

"We have taken bold, necessary actions during the time that Congress has failed to act," he said.

Mayorkas listed several immigration-related initiatives the Biden administration launched in recent weeks, including streamlining the asylum-seeking process and opening what he called "safe mobility offices" to assist migrants traveling from Central and South America. But a poll released Sunday by CBS News showed that nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mayorkas, who is the target of a Republican-led impeachment effort in the U.S. House over the border crisis, said his visit to Texas to meet with front-line immigration agents is part of the administration's effort to counter that narrative.

"It is opportunities like this that I will use to communicate the facts to the American people," Mayorkas said. "As we all know too well, the issue of immigration is an issue that is highly politicized.

"It's very important that they understand the challenge that we are experiencing."

Record U.S.-Mexico border apprehensions in December

Mayorkas' visit to Eagle Pass — a town of about 29,000 residents 145 miles southwest of San Antonio and which over the past year has emerged as one of the nation's hottest crossings for people entering the United States without legal authorization — came after federal border officials reported a record 225,000 apprehensions at the southern border in December alone, sometimes reaching about 10,000 per day.

Apprehensions dropped sharply with the turning of the new year, but about an hour before Mayorkas was scheduled to arrive in Eagle Pass, a dozen migrants from Mexico reached the Texas shore downriver from the downtown square.

The group, which included several adults and a 6-year-old boy, had made the trip from Venezuela and appeared to have little trouble overcoming the coils of concertina wire installed by Texas National Guard soldiers and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers.

They also crossed the waist-high river in plain sight of the 1,000-foot string of buoys Texas installed in the Rio Grande ostensibly to discourage migrants from wading through the river to cross the border.

Many in the group came with a change of clothes and were able to swap their river-soaked jeans for drier pairs before National Guard soldiers marched them away beyond the sight of onlooking reporters.

'A lot of tension building up'

Jessie Fuentes — an Eagle Pass native who operates a rafting company on the Rio Grande and has been a harsh critic of Gov. Greg Abbott's $11 billion border initiative called Operation Lone Star — said he is tired of seeing his hometown in the crosshairs of an escalating political war over immigration.

Fuentes called last week's visit to Eagle Pass by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and about 60 of his fellow congressional Republicans "a political dog-and-pony show." Fuentes was also critical of the Biden administration's decision to temporarily close the international bridges that connect Eagle Pass with Piedras Negras on the Mexican side.

"That really hurts the community, and the business owners in the downtown area are frustrated," said Fuentes. "There's just a lot of tension building up. And it's pretty crazy."

Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr., who is a Democrat but holds a nonpartisan municipal post, was among those who met privately with Mayorkas but did not attend the secretary's news conference.

"I made it a point to detail the impact the immigration crisis has had on our community both in the safety aspect and our local economy," Salinas said in a social media post. "He is well aware that shutting down the bridge system is detrimental to our City and assured us that going forward they will take all necessary steps to prevent that from occurring again."

Salinas has been among the critics of the White House's immigration policies, and he has called for increased federal assistance to handle the influx of migrants who arrive needing city services. The mayor noted that Mayorkas told him progress was made last month when Mayorkas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others in the Biden administration met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss ways to stem the flow of migrants before they reach the United States.

"Going forward we will see what actions the federal government and Congress take to put a stop to this immigration debacle," Salinas said.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican and one of the nation's harshest critics of Biden's immigration policies, did not weigh in on Mayorkas' visit. Last week, however, he called Mayorkas "pathetic" after the secretary cited climate change among the reasons for unlawful immigration.

Abbott has been on offense during the first three years of the Biden administration, not only beefing up the state's law enforcement and military presence in South Texas, but also placing more than 80,000 migrants on buses to cities run by Democrats and chartering a plane to send 120 to Chicago.

Congressional action remains elusive

Even dating back to the Obama and Trump administrations, calls for modernizing U.S. border and immigration policies have raged on with little legislative effect. Heading into the 2024 presidential election, when all U.S. House seats and half the Senate seats will be up for grabs, immigration reform appears to be just as elusive.

Mayorkas told reporters he is "privileged to be working with both Republicans and Democratic senators" on immigration legislation, but he offered little in terms of tangible progress.

"We need Congress to provide the supplemental funding that President Biden requested months ago," Mayorkas said. "We need more Border Patrol agents and more case processors so that the agents can be out in the field doing the heroic work that is their fundamental mission. We need more officers so that migration surges do not force mitigation measures of last resort, like bridge closures."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: US homeland security chief calls on Congress to fix immigration system