By Congressman Josh Brecheen
Since coming to Congress just over a year ago, I’ve had the honor of serving on the House Committee on Homeland Security. Our committee has been granted broad legislative authority to keep America’s homeland safe. We’re responsible for overseeing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ensuring its leadership follows the laws Congress passed.
But as Oklahomans already know, DHS leadership is failing to follow the law and keep our country secure.
Under the reckless leadership of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, more than 6.7 million illegal aliens have been apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Southwest border. An estimated 1.8 million more illegal aliens snuck across and altogether evaded CBP. Oklahomans don’t just know these are the worst numbers ever, they see it and they feel it.
Now, after a nearly year-long investigation, our committee is taking up impeachment proceedings against Secretary Mayorkas. I support this effort 100 percent. We need a Secretary who is going to follow the laws passed by Congress.
Take, for example, section 274 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The section makes it a crime to “transport, or move, or attempt to transport or move” illegal aliens inside the United States. Thousands of people are charged annually under this statute. But since taking office, Secretary Mayorkas has overseen a system that moves illegal aliens to their preferred destination inside the U.S. through a network of non- governmental organizations that receive taxpayer-grants.
Last year, as part of our investigation into Secretary Mayorkas, the Committee detailed the taxpayer-funded system DHS created:
“DHS has released illegal aliens to a vast network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), particularly those located at the border, who then provide logistical support. These groups receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to provide all manner of services to illegal aliens once they are released from CBP or ICE custody, including food, lodging, and transportation to the destination of their choice…The Biden administration is not just working with NGOs to transport illegal aliens across the country, but is also actively doing so using charter and commercial flights, often under the cover of night.”
Right now, drug cartels are encouraging families in Latin America to take the dangerous trip to the Southwest border, with the promise that DHS will release them from the border and to the city of their choice. All the while, a non-profit organization receiving taxpayer funds will be providing care and transport.
Secretary Mayorkas knows that cartels profit when they move aliens through Mexico to the Southwest border. Yet, he continues to increase the budget for programs and policies that cartels capitalize on.
Imagine being a mom or dad in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. You work hard every day to put food on the table for your kids, trying to survive the record-high inflation Biden caused. Meanwhile, the government uses your tax dollars to fund transit and care costs for illegal immigrants, which perpetuates the human smuggling system run by cartels. Under this perverse system, drug cartels are getting richer, American families are getting poorer, and American cities get flooded with illegal aliens.
It’s completely unacceptable and merits the impeachment proceedings coming before our Committee.
DHS refuses to be transparent about how much the federal government is spending transporting and caring for illegal aliens once they arrive in the United States. Yet we do know that this fiscal year, DHS doled out $770 million to NGOs to shelter and transport aliens paroled into the United States and in fiscal year 2022, it gave at least $140 million in advance payments to NGOs. Shockingly, but not unpredictable, we’ve learned that some of these funds are being spent on migrants who purposely evaded border patrol.
It’s not just the cost of the transportation program that’s shocking. DHS-funded planes arrive, often in the middle of the night, and leave migrants and their families on the side of the road or in parking lots, assuming NGOs and local governments will pick up the slack. Because of Secretary Mayorkas’ catch-and-release gambit, every state is now a border state. As a former Obama DHS official put it, “This [decision by the Biden administration] is being laid at the feet of every single city in the United States who are not going to have the resources to deal with this.”
This system is unsustainable for Oklahoma and for every other state in the Union.
At the end of the day, we are either a nation of laws, or we are not. We either have borders, or we don’t. Secretary Mayorkas has repeatedly flouted the law, ignored our border, and used taxpayer funds to advance a system of law-breaking. He must be held accountable.
