Mayorkas Aide: U.S. Superpower Can’t Stop Economic Migration

Central American migrants, part of a caravan hoping to reach the U.S. border, move on the
AP Photo/Moises Castillo
Neil Munro

The United States superpower cannot stop the global flow of poor economic migrants into the United States, says a top aide to border chief Alejandro Mayorkas.

But the U.S. can reduce illegal crossings by simply inviting the migrants to legally cross the border, regardless of the predictable economic and civic damage to  Americans, according to Blas Nunez-Neto, the assistant secretary for policy at Mayorkas’s Department of Homeland Security,

Nunez-Neto told TheHill.com:

The bottom line is: When you look at what people go through to come here — these people that we’re encountering on the border now that have crossed the Darién jungle [in Panama] — if you go down and look at the Darién, you can’t believe the number of people that are transiting that area every day …  It’s families with small kids. So if [they]’re willing to do that, there’s very little we can do at the border that’s going to stop people from coming if we don’t also give them the hope that there’s a legal way to come here.

Nunez-Neto’s agency was given $97 billion in taxpayer funds to stop illegal migration in 2022.

“The guy seems to have rejected the concept of American sovereignty by arguing that the American people have no choice but to allow millions of people to enter our country whenever they wish,” responded Jon Feere, a former top manager at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Feere told Breitbart News:

If he is unable to stop illegal immigration, then he’s in the wrong job … If a cruise ship’s captain is telling you “We’re probably going to run into a few more rocks and crash into a few more docks,” you probably wouldn’t want to keep them steering the ship. When a person tells you that they’re not going to be able to do their job, you probably don’t want to keep them on [the job] — assuming that you want the mission actually carried out

In practice, Mayorkas and Nunez-Neto are spending billions of dollars to encourage and help a huge migrant flood to overwhelm the U.S. border laws, Feere said:

There are many things the executive branch could do to discourage illegal immigration and to make it clear that phony asylum claims will not be tolerated. But they’re continuing to encourage more and more illegal immigration and then claiming the system is overwhelmed as if they don’t have some control over it.

On August 10, Biden asked for another $23 billion to defend Ukraine’s borders and roughly $3 billion to help more economic migrants get through the U.S. border and into the opportunities needed by Americans.

Mayorkas has repeatedly explained why he supports more migration: His migrant parents, his sympathy for migrants, his support for “equity” between Americans and foreigners, his willingness to put his priorities above the law, and the claimed “needs” of U.S. business — regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans, the impact on U.S. children, the drug epidemic, or Americans’ rational and legitimate opposition.

Nunez-Neto was born in Argentina, and also felt like an outsider in his U.S. society, telling TheHill:

For Nunez-Neto, his approach is influenced by his background as an immigrant himself, describing immigration both as essential and a process that’s become less orderly as Congress has failed to update laws to address shifting migration patterns.

He came to the U.S. from Argentina at age 9 with his mother, who worked at the Argentine Embassy in Washington — a move that left him as one of the only Hispanic children in his downtown D.C. school.

“That was kind of hard — the adjustment to the states was hard. … As a kid, it was tough, because after a while I felt like I didn’t belong in the U.S. and I didn’t belong in Argentina. I was kind of a mix. As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate that’s actually a strength, right? Because you have windows into different cultures and different societies that other people don’t. And I think that can be pretty powerful.”

“The Executive Branch should be run by people who are tireless advocates for enforcing the laws the American people put on the books,” responded Feere, adding:

We don’t need [agency administrators] who are going to question the immigration laws. We need people who are going to enforce them. All this hand-wringing over our laws is simply resulting in less enforcement. And that in and of itself is resulting in more illegal immigration, which our system is struggling to deal with. Simple enforcement under the rule of law would go a long way in discouraging illegal immigration, fraudulent asylum claims, visa overstayers, and so on, ut this administration has made every effort to reduce immigration enforcement in every way it can.

But Nunez-Neto claimed that “we are, in fact, enforcing the laws that Congress enacted.”

However, Mayorkas, Nunez-Neto, and their deputies are opening up many quasi-legal paths for illegal migrants, and ignoring the legal requirement to detain migrants until their asylum claims are decided. Instead, they quickly register and release the migrants so they can get jobs, pay off their huge smuggling debts, and encourage more migrants to head northwards.

In July, Nunez-Neto admitted that the cartels have expanded their ability to move indebted labor into the U.S. economy:

We are now seeing the drug cartels increasingly becoming a key player in not just collecting taxes for people who transit through their territory [in Northern Mexico] — which is what we saw historically — but actually moving people and becoming deeply involved in human smuggling, not just in Mexico, but throughout the region, including, you know, in [South America’s] Colombia and Darien [Gap] region.

Nunez-Neto also predicted more migration: “We fully believe we could see another [monthly] increase in migration,” Nunez-Neto told TheHill.

In late May and early June, The administration claimed a 70 percent decline in illegal migration because their new rules replaced the Title 42 border barrier. In June, the number jumped again as Mayorkas welcomed 130,000 illegals, alongside another 70,000 migrants admitted via his quasi-legal programs, and perhaps 50,000 “gotaways” who were not arrested at the border.

But Nunez-Neto then blamed the nation’s lax asylum laws for the rising wave of migrants, saying, “We hear a lot like, “You could just shut the border down, if you wanted to.” And that’s not true. We have laws that allow people to claim asylum at the border when they’re encountered.”

WATCH: Exclusive Video Shows MASSIVE CAMP of Illegal Immigrants Waiting to Cross U.S. Border

John Rourke

Yet Nunez-Neto also admitted that most of the migrants are not eligible for asylum, for example, because they are migrating for economic gain: “We often talk about people at the border as asylum seekers, but the facts are that the majority of people we encounter are not eligible for asylum.”

Nonetheless, the migrants were admitted, said Nunez-Neto, because “we were very generous, and we wanted to err on the side of letting those people have their day in court.”

Feere responded:

Everyone understands that the majority of these people are not eligible for asylum. Yet the Biden administration continues to allow them [to pay smuggling debts], doesn’t detain them, and isn’t making any effort to deport them. In other words, they’ve effectively abolished not only our borders but also our asylum law.

Because at the end of it all, it doesn’t even matter [to Mayorkas or Nunez-Neto] whether a court rules against a person’s [asylum] case. Their position is that people should stay regardless and be rewarded with citizenship. They are amnesty advocates who don’t want to enforce laws.

Nunez Neto’s prediction of more migration “is an admission that their policies are doing nothing to stop illegal immigration,” said Feere. “They’re effectively admitting that what they’re doing is encouraging illegal immigration, which is the opposite of what the Executive Branch is supposed to be doing.”

TheHill.com is trusted by pro-migration advocates to favor pro-migration causes. For example, it described Nunez-Neto as a “mild-mannered policy wonk” and provided him with a flattering headline, “Meet the DHS official seeking a middle ground on the border.”

 

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.