Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson says President Biden’s Homeland Security chief should resign. Hinson says Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis has failed to secure the southern border.
“It’s frustrating to me that I feel like here we are again after a year, we were giving these warnings a year ago about the situations not only at our border communities, for our law enforcement officers not only down in Texas and in places like Iowa who continue to raise the alarm that this crisis has worsened,” Hinson said during a hearing this week in Washington.
In March, US authorities arrested 210,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the border with Mexico — the highest monthly total in two decades. Hinson, a Republican from Marion who spoke with Iowa reporters today by phone, said the Homeland Security secretary does not have a plan to deal with an expected surge in illegal border crossings after May 23. That’s when the order is lifted that has been sending those caught at the border back to Mexico to await immigration proceedings.
“There has been a huge void in leadership at the Department of Homeland Security,” Hinson said. “When he’s saying that he’s effectively managed the border and we are hearing about these complete failures, not to mention the safety and security risk to our entire country, that to me is a dereliction of duty.”
The Homeland Security secretary has said his agency is setting up temporary facilities along the border to handle more migrants and has proposed a new regulation to speed up deportations. Due to a court ruling, asylum seekers will still be required to wait in Mexico for their hearings in U.S. immigration court.