KC area lawmakers divided on border as DHS secretary predicts 20-year high in migration
Kansas City area lawmakers are divided on how the U.S. should respond to a surge of migrants at the southern border.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement Tuesday that U.S. border agencies are “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”
U.S. border agents detained more than 100,000 migrants last month, the highest four-week total since 2019.
Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall blamed the surge on President Joe Biden’s decision to rescind a policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, among other changes to immigration enforcement after President Donald Trump left office.
Marshall traveled to the southern border Sunday, recording dramatic footage from a helicopter of migrants crossing the border.
In a phone conference Tuesday, Marshall made a series of claims about the national security and public health threats posed by the surge, which comes as the pandemic enters its second year.
“My big concern is we’re bringing everybody together to go through some type of processing and then we’re sending them to large dorm facilities as well,” Marshall said, contending that the conditions could lead to a rapid spread of COVID-19 among the detainees.
“I’m just really concerned about the new cases we’re going to see.”
Mayorkas said in his statement that the pandemic has complicated the situation, but that the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing health protocols to ensure physical distancing at facilities.
Trump era vs. Biden era
Marshall traveled to the border in 2019 and defended Trump’s administration against criticism after congressional Democrats released videos of overcrowded facilities.
“They have showers, put them all through medical assessment. We’re trying. Is there room for improvement? Yes,” Marshall said at the time.
Marshall said he did not get to tour the facilities during this trip.
“I was able to talk to the border patrol, the medics,” he said. “What they described to me was very crowded, doing the best that they can. They’re expecting record numbers of children coming there in the very near future.”
The region’s Democrats contended that Biden inherited the crisis at the border.
Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids said the situation underscored the need to pass comprehensive immigration reform for a long-term solution. She invoked the Trump administration’s family separation policy, which ended in 2018 when she was a candidate for office.
“The Biden Administration inherited a broken immigration system – one that was made worse by the previous administration’s policy of purposely separating children from their parents, as well as their lack of investments in border facilities, personnel, and training that would actually keep our border secure,” Davids said in a statement.
“It will take time to rebuild the entire system in a safe, orderly, and humane way, but right now the Biden Administration must quickly determine the additional resources they need to house and care for all children at the border appropriately.”
Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver blamed the crisis on Congress’ two-decade failure to pass immigration reform and accused GOP lawmakers of engaging in political stunts.
“Rather than joining with Democrats to diagnose potential fixes within our immigration system, Republicans seem to prefer to politicize and prolong the predicament at the border,” Cleaver said.
House Democrats are expected later this week to pass the DREAM Act, which grants conditional residency with the right to work to people who came illegally as children if they meet certain conditions, such as earning a high school diploma and passing a criminal background check.
Marshall said the resumption of border wall construction is a prerequisite for him to consider Democratic proposals.
‘Half of the people’
A slew of congressional Republicans have traveled to the border in recent days as the party seeks put pressure on Biden’s administration during its first 100 days.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, claimed Monday that border agents told him that “they’re finding people from Yemen, Iran, Turkey, people on the terrorist watch list” among the migrants.
Congressional Democrats called on McCarthy, a Republican from California, to provide evidence to support the claim, which at the time had not been verified by federal agencies.
Axios reported Tuesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed to Congress that four people arrested at the border since October had names matching the FBI’s watch list. The information was attributed to an anonymous congressional aide. McCarthy posted the story to Twitter as an affirmation of his claim from the previous day.
Marshall echoed McCarthy, saying Tuesday that “you’d have to worry about the profile” of someone seeking to enter the country illegally.
“Half of the people crossing the border are not from Mexico and not from Central America,” Marshall said. “How many are terrorists? It’s hard to give you a number.”
U.S. Border Patrol data shows that the overwhelming number of migrants apprehended at the southern border come from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Asked to provide data supporting Marshall’s claim that half of the people were from other countries, Marshall’s office pointed to a new release about 11 Iranians apprehended in February.
From October through February, the U.S. Border Patrol had encountered 187,218 single adults from Mexico alone— not including unaccompanied children and family units.
Marshall’s office also provided a presentation slide that showed 5,272 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley sector from “Special Interest Countries,” since October of 2018.
Pressed on whether this amounted to half, Michawn Rich, Marshall’s spokeswoman, said the senator “was referring to the apprehensions from special interest countries” in the chart and that is exclusive to that sector, a 17,000 square-square mile stretch.
“Roughly half were from Nicaragua and the other half were from all over the globe,” she said.
Mexico is not considered a special interest country, which is why no migrants from Mexico were not included in the chart.
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "KC area lawmakers divided on border as DHS secretary predicts 20-year high in migration."
