The Daily Signal - Mayorkas Set for Return to Hot Seat for Hearing on Threats at Border

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is expected to face a barrage of questions regarding the security threats at America’s southern border at another hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.  Mayorkas is set to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee at a hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland.” The homeland security chief recently testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Nov. 8 and before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Oct. 31. “Secretary Mayorkas has been very good at evading answers throughout all of his testimonies,” says James Massa, the CEO of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for lower rates of immigration, adding that he expects Mayorkas “to be evasive again.”  “He has deferred to not wanting to answer specific numbers, not wanting to answer countries of origin, not wanting to answer how any terrorist who's already been apprehended—and there's almost 170 of them that were on the FBI terrorist watchlist—how they handle them and what they do with them,” Massa says of Mayorkas.  Massa joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what to expect during Wednesday’s hearing and whether real border security measures are possible under the current administration.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Journal podcast for Wednesday, November 15th. I'm Virginia Allen. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee. He is expected to face a lot of questions related to concerns over terrorists crossing America's southern border. So how is he going to handle those questions? Numbers USA CEO James Massa says Secretary Mayorkas has been very good at evading answers. throughout all his testimonies and doesn't expect anything to change today. So will the secretary actually weigh in on the situation at the border? And can anything actually change at our southern border under the Biden administration? If it doesn't, what does that mean for national security? Mesa joins us on the show today to answer those questions and much more. So stay tuned for our conversation after this. Looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues from America's outpost here in Washington,

sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. You'll get top conservative research, a rundown of important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online and hot takes from our experts. Sign up at heritage.org slash agenda or at the link in the show notes. It is my pleasure to have with us today, the CEO of Numbers, U.S.C. James Massa, thank you so much, sir, for being here with us today. Oh, it's great to be here. It's my pleasure. Well, before we dive deep in this conversation of talking about border and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas

and where things stand in Congress related to border security, first, just share with us a little bit about Numbers USA and your mission and what you all do. Well, Numbers USA is a nonprofit organization. It's been in place for 27 years. and the founder Roy Beck has retired about a year ago, so I'm the CEO from the last year, and we continue to empower voters to be able to achieve a sensible immigration policy. And we do that by providing tools and information. We provide access, and we provide influence. And we have offices across from the hill.

We have offices in Arlington. We communicate regularly with staff and with elected officials on immigration, our sole focus is immigration. Excellent. Well, we have a lot of ground to cover in regards to immigration. So it's great to have you with us today. There's no shortage of things to talk about when it comes to immigration, that is for sure, and border security. So this morning, starting this morning, November 15th, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro

Miorchus is testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee. And the hearing is titled Worldwide Threats to the Homeland. And we know that GOP lawmakers are going to ask, we strongly suspect at least, that GOP lawmakers are going to ask Mayorkis about security threats, specifically along the border, especially as it relates to the possibility of terrorists entering through our southern border. How do you think Mayorkas is going to handle being pressed on this issue? Well, Secretary of Majoricus has been very good at evading answers throughout all of his testimonies. So I expect him to be evasive again. He has deferred to not wanting to answer

specific numbers, not wanting to answer countries of origin, not wanting to answer how any terrorist who's already been apprehended, and there's almost 170 of them that were on the FBI terrorist watch this that have been apprehended, how they handle them and what they do with them. He continues to say, well, I can have that conversation a more appropriate setting. So I expect him to continue to be evasive in very similar fashion. What would it take if we're talking about actually getting to the border to a place where we could say, all right, we can be as confident as we possibly can be that we're not going to have terrorists take advantage of our border, try to cross the border, successfully cross the southern border.

What would that look like to actually get to a place where lawmakers can say with confidence, we have done everything we can possibly do to secure the border and prevent the threat of terrorism from entering over that border? Well, there is a whole series of changes that need to occur from the practices of this administration and practices of other administrations in the past, both Democrat and Republican administrations of the past. You can go back five years and see that there were only two people who were apprehended on the southern border who were on the terrorist watch list. But this year, we have over 170. So part of the issue is the sheer volume of people who are coming to the southern border.

southern border, and the message to the world abroad is come one, come all. You can come in, and we will actually parole you and give you a job and allow you to stay here until we figure out what we're going to do afterwards. So part of it is that the messaging to the world has to change, that the border is indeed closed and secure and open for legal immigration, not for illegal immigration. Now, to actually accomplish that is a mix of different things. Maybe I should let you ask another question before I go into a whole long series of things I could talk about. Well, there's a lot to unpack there. And you mentioned numbers. And, you know, we hear these huge numbers being thrown out about how many people have been apprehended at our southern

border and numbers on the terrorist watch list. And it gets overwhelming quickly. I want to take a minute and try and break down some of those numbers and begin by talking about Secretary Mayorkas's testimony recently before the Senate Appropriations Committee. So he testified, and one of the things that he was really pressed on specifically was of the six million individuals, illegal aliens, who've been encountered at the border under the Biden administration, how many have stayed within the U.S.? Do we know how many are here or have been sent back, deported, et cetera. Majorcas either wasn't able or wasn't willing to give an answer on this before Senate Appropriations

Committee. What do you think? Does he just not know how many are here or does he know, but he doesn't want to say publicly? I think the answer is that someone knows, and I assume that he knows. It is numbers that are caught and captured and kept track of, but they are not disclosed. This administration has been as evasive as Secretary Majoriscus. being in his testimony in not wanting to disclose numbers. Most recently in September, for example, they finally released how many encounters had occurred from Customs and Border Patrol with those

who are illegal entry attempts. And it was over 300,000 in that month. 300,000, if you do the math, is one person almost every 10 seconds showing up somewhere across the United States trying to enter illegally. So it's a tremendous problem, and those numbers are known. And what is being done with the numbers that are disclosed is a little bit of hiding underneath a shell, and that you'll say, oh, this is how many people were coming into the port of entry. Oh, this is how many people came into our airports inside the United States. So this is how many people were encountered illegally on the border. And then, of course, there's the really scary number, which is those people who were not encountered that we know got away, and they call them gotaways,

600,000 at least last year, and then those who we don't know, but we have evidence of being there, but we don't have actual ability to count, which some figures say are 10 times what the known gotaways are. So he knows the number. He knows it's a very scary number, and I'm not trying to scare the United States people. I'm trying to be realistic that we have a very open border right now and a large number of people are coming across it and with it are people who are convicts and terrorists as well. Can you help us picture what these numbers look like practically? So six million encounters, that exceeds the population of many states, correct?

It does. In fact, a couple things we've used to try to give people a sense of that. 300,000 people would be the three largest college football stadiums all showing up at the same time in one month. Four million people is the population of Los Angeles. So the city of Los Angeles, we have more than one of those showing up in our nation every single year. That's outrageous. I mean, the legal limit that's supposed to be allowed into the United States, according to Title 8, which is what the Congress laws indicate, is about 1.1 million people. So our illegal immigration is now dwarfing or legal immigration.

It's just out of control. Well, one of the things I've been fascinated by is that some of the messaging around securing the border, around border issues, starts to sound a little bit similar. And, you know, everyone now is talking about a need to address what's happening at the border, but the solutions are very different. So I'm wondering if you can unpack when,

when conservatives say we need to secure the border, we need funding to secure the border, what do they mean versus when the Biden administration says we need funding for the border, what they mean? Well, that specific topic is a nice subtlety that you've picked up on. When you hear someone's talking about securing the border from a more conservative approach, meaning they're going to stop the amount of illegal flow coming across the border, what you're hearing is adding more agents to be actually asking. the border to interdict, to be able to interdict fentanyl that comes across illegally or comes across

in the ports or to be able to interdict people who are coming across. When the Biden administration talks about adding more funding, they're talking about processing people faster, more judges, more ability to be able to bring people into the nation and handle them quickly so that they are now inside the nation with maybe a permit to work for the next five years with a requirement to show up in a court hearing seven years from now, and the number continues to increase. So the use of funds that's being requested by the Biden administration is to process faster. The use of funds being requested by what is in HR2, which is the legislation that was passed in the House in May of this year to secure the border is having to do with adding additional

barriers and also adding additional agents. Excellent. Well, you mentioned HR2. let's go ahead and talk about that very, very important bill that, as you said, did pass in the House in May. The Senate has not done too much with HR2. Let's talk about if it has any hope of making movement in the Senate. What is the Senate talking about right now in relation to border security? Are they trying to bring a bill forward, whether HR2 or something else?

You know, it's been a rapidly unfolding scenario. And if I had answered this question for you last week or at the end, end of last week, it had been different than how I'm answering it even today. So going back just a few weeks before the last time we had to have a vote for a continuing resolution, Senator Cruz had introduced a companion bill from the House into the Senate, which was essentially a mirroring of HR2. So it had been introduced. There were over 27 co-sponsors to that, including a minority leader Mitch McConnell, who also co-sponsored that bill. So the bill is there. in parallel to the House. What's occurring now is they're trying to figure out what parts of that

are going to be able to be accepted if it ends up being a contested vote in the House and in the Senate. So they're looking at different pieces, what's the most important part, and what they're finding is that HR2 is a comprehensive immigration reform bill that secures the border. And it addresses a bunch of interleaving things that are very important. So you can't leave one piece out without it affecting the other piece that you've put in place. So even though there's many pieces to it, all of them are essential, and they're trying to figure out if there's anything they can reduce as maybe a compromise to be able to find a solution that everyone can join on. Okay. Let's be realist for a moment, as depressing as that might be. What is the likely outcome here in the Senate?

given that it is controlled by Democrats, and of course, we have a Democratic president. Well, I think what we're going to find in May, when the HR2 passed the House, there was a lot of concern that it was just a messaging bill, meaning it wasn't going to go anywhere. It was never going to become law because it couldn't pass the Senate. The political wins are such that with the continuing resolution requirement to keep the government open, there are a few things that are going to be compromised on, and you know what they are. They've already broken out and addressed some things with Israeli funding.

they're looking at Ukraine funding. They're looking now at the border funding as well. And what we heard from the Speaker of the House, Representative Johnson, recently, was that the Ukraine funding and the border funding is inextribly intertwined together, meaning that you can't address one without addressing the other. I think that because that's the case, that we are going to see something come through that changes immigration law this Congress. We were going to see it maybe before the end of the year.

year, possibly into January or February, depending on when the continuing resolution agreements are actually struck. But I think we are going to see a change, and it's going to have some portion, if not all, of HR2 as part of that. I like your optimism. This is good. I say I'm optimistic, but I wasn't optimistic before. We thought it was going to have a huge hill to climb. But politics is all about compromise. Politics is all about being able to have must-fund things or must-pass things occur. And there are some must-pass legislation that's coming forward right now. And some of it's absolutely must-pass to keep the government open. Other is just politically must-pass. They've got to make a decision on it. So I think there's opportunity for there to be amendments that include something

that's as strongly supported in the House as HR-2. You have a majority, although it's a thin majority, who support HR-2. They passed it. They want it. I think they're going to stand by it. Let's take the next few moments and talk about what could change a year from now. So we just recently saw the third GOP debate. And a major topic during that debate was border security and all the candidates weighed in and discussed how they would handle working to secure the border and tackling the issue of fentanyl. if a conservative ends up in the White House, wins the election in 2024, whatever candidate, if they have conservative principles, they're pro-border security, how long would it take, given the situation right now, how long would it take to actually go about securing the border

and reining in the current situation? I think you can see the impact of action taken within 60 days. And the reason I say that is, again, part of the biggest issue is the message. Or is the border open and you can come in or is the border closed and we're going to apprehend you and send you back? If the message is we're going to apprehend you and send you back or we're going to apprehend you and as the law requires today, detain you or return you to your country of origin or a contiguous nation, meaning Canada or Mexico, that's the law today.

It's just being skirted through things that are abusive, being abused in asylum and which is another topic. But the point is, is that if we just enforce the law today and told the nations of the world, we're going to enforce our law, it would dramatically reduce the number of people who are coming to the border. So you would see change right away. Then as you actually implement it and provide more agents, implement it, provide a closing of loopholes on asylum and parole, implement it and actually add additional barriers, all those things are going to start to dramatically long-term reduce the number of people coming into the country illegally. And do we have figures on how much that would cost to do those things, to add the additional agents, to build those physical barriers, increased technology in order to really truly secure our border?

I can't rattle those figures off right now. I'm sorry I didn't come in prepared with that, but they are part of the HR2 study that was done to say, can this be afforded? I've heard figures from $10 billion to $1 billion. The most important thing, though, is to enforce the current law. The current law today can be enforced much more relevant. by the current resources we have. For example, instead of being able to bring people in and say they have a reasonable fear of persecution because they come from a nation where there are bad things such as crime, such as poverty, but they're coming here for a job. They're not really being persecuted for their religious beliefs or for their ethnicity or anything like that from their country abortion. The law says that's the type of thing that needs to be going on in order to give them asylum here. Or if we parole them in for humanitarian reasons. The humanitarian reason is something like they need an organ transplant.

They've had a relative who's died and they're trying to attend a funeral. There's very specific things named off in law that clarify what a humanitarian reason is. Those things are not being followed today. In fact, they're not even being followed on a case-by-case basis, which again is the law. Every one of these decisions are supposed to be made on an individual basis. But this administration has opened up the door to whole classes of individuals based on their country of origin. So if you're from Venezuela, you're one of 400,000 people now who as a class are able to come into the United States because bad things are going on in Venezuela. There's no question about that. But the issue is, are those people really being persecuted? Are they in a

country where they could have stopped anywhere along the way coming up to the United States and found a place that they can have a better life than they currently have in Venezuela? Looking at the 2024 presidential election, how high does the issue of border security rank for voters, do you think? We think it's number one, two, or three. And I would say it was two very solidly. I do think that the issue of abortion is one of the issues that you see pop up all the time that ends up pushing out from number two to number three possibly.

I think the economy is always number one. So you have this battle going on as is it number two is at number three. Today, whether it be with the American voters or not for the 2024 election, today in Congress, it is absolutely number two. The number two issue is immigration and they've got to address it in order to be able to get the funding of the nation in place. Well, we really appreciate your time. Mr. Massa, just breaking this down for us going into those numbers. It's incredibly helpful. I encourage all of our listeners. Make sure to visit the Numbers USA website. We'll put a link in today's show notes so they can find the resources that you all offer, but really appreciate your time today.

It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you again. And with that, that is going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here at the Daily Signal podcast. Also, make sure that you take a moment to subscribe to the show. We are across all podcast platforms, and we love seeing your five-star ratings and reviews roll in. Also, be sure to check out our evening show, our Top News Edition, that comes out every weekday around 5 p.m. So that you can stay on top of the news that you need to know. Well, with that, have a great rest of your day.

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