House Judiciary chair Rep. Jim Jordan has subpoenaed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and requested documents and communications relating to the department’s actions to manage the ongoing unlawful migration crisis at the southern border.
The committee said in a press release about the subpoena that it requested documents relating to the September 2023 surge in unlawful migration in Eagle Pass multiple times, but DHS failed to provide any documents about the actions it took.
DHS responded to the request and offered an in-person briefing about what occurred along the southern border, but this offer was retracted just days later after the committee attempted to schedule the briefing, according to the House Judiciary press release.
No indication was provided to the committee about why the briefing was offered and subsequently retracted by the department. DHS said that it “trusts the Committee has the latest operational updates.”
A letter sent to Mayorkas about the subpoena states that the crisis along the border “has been readily apparent in Eagle Pass, Texas, which serves as a microcosm of the broader border disaster.”
“To that end, we have written to request documents and communications relating to the illegal immigration crisis along the southwest border, including requesting information relating to the mass illegal alien influx event in Eagle Pass, Texas, that occurred in September 2023.8 Since the Committee’s initial request, multiple sectors along the southwest border have similarly experienced mass influxes of illegal aliens on a sustained basis,” wrote Jordan (R-OH).
“Instead of implementing consequences to quell these mass influx events, illegal aliens surging the southwest border are rewarded with release —a fact you confirmed when you stated that the current release rate for such aliens is ‘above 85 percent,” he added.
The letter continued, noting that the current policies enacted by Mayorkas and the Biden administration have been shown to benefit unlawful migrants while only providing “harm and endangerment for American communities.”
“The Committee has in good faith attempted to work with DHS to scope and prioritize its requests. However, the reality is, in the more than three months since the Committee’s initial request, DHS has produced nothing at all in response to the Committee’s November 6 and December 8 letters, and it was only months after the letters were sent that DHS even attempted to engage on the substance of such requests,” Jordan wrote.
The chairman concluded the letter by stating that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted the committee power to perform oversight that “encompasses inquiries into the administration of existing laws, studies of proposed laws, and surveys in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling Congress to remedy them.”
This subpoena comes just weeks after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Mayorkas for allegedly participating in a catch-and-release scheme and lying to Congress about the security of the border, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported incredibly high numbers of encounters with unlawful migrants since Biden took office in 2021, with more than 7.5 million encounters reported by the agency.
