Joe Biden’s DHS Chief Pushes ‘All of Society Effort’ to Help Deported Migrants

Alejandro Mayorkas, nominee to be Secretary of Homeland Security testifies during his conf
JOSHUA ROBERTS/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

President Joe Biden’s border security chief is launching an “all-of-society effort” to help some of the Central American migrants who left their kids in the United States when President Donald Trump enforced the nation’s law against illegal migration.

The all-out push to help migrants comes as more the 17 million Americans are looking for wages, work, and decent homes during the coronavirus crash, and as Biden’s officials welcome more migrants to compete for the jobs needed by Americans.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sketched out the top priority project during a March 1 press conference at the White House where he did not mention his legal duty to protect Americans’ right to a national labor market devoid of illegal workers:

We are working closely with counsel for the separated family members. We are doing it along with the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. I spoke with the foreign minister of each of those countries this past Friday. We are doing it with nongovernmental organizations, and we intend to and will shortly harness the capabilities, resources, and desire of the private sector, This is not only an all-of-government, but an all-of-society effort to do what is right.

We are hoping to reunite the [several hundred] families, either here or in the country of origin. We hope to be in a position to give them [the choice]. And if, in fact, they seek to reunite here in the United States, we will explore lawful pathways for them to remain in the United States, and to address the family needs, so we are acting as restoratively as possible …

“He’s putting their interests ahead of the rule of law and the interests of Americans who have to foot the bill for this,” responded Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. “Ultimately, he’ll be putting the interests of the next wave of illegal migration ahead of the interests of Americans.”

The focus of Mayorkas’ sympathy is the bloc of Central American economic migrants who brought their children to the United States in 2018 to help them get into the United States via the Flores loophole. Trump temporarily blocked the migrant pathway by charging thousands of migrants with illegal migration while keeping their children sheltered elsewhere.

However, Trump dropped the tactic when Democrats, immigration lawyers, and media outlets portrayed the successful enforcement project as a “kids in cages” scandal, so generating a massive emotional reaction from Democrat voters.

After Trump dropped the tactic, a few hundred of the foreign families left their children with relatives in the United States — and then refused contact with the U.S. government. Simultaneously, the ACLU launched a lawsuit demanding the migrants be paid damages and green cards for the claimed trauma of sending their children into Americans’ K-12 schools.

Mayorkas “is being emotionally manipulative, and is clearly lacking any emotion for Americans and communities who are paying for this crisis in their taxes, in lost opportunities and in the erosion of the quality of life in their communities,” said Vaughan.

“He fully intends to put all of our governments, federal, state and local — which is really all of the resources paid in by taxpayers — to work on behalf of a stream of migrants from Central America, and present it as a humanitarian solution, as a compassionate solution,” said Vaughan. “In fact, it is irresponsible messaging that’s going to lead more people to put their families at risk, to take advantage of the system.”

“His job is to safeguard the United States of America and look out for the interests of Americans — and thereby legal immigrants — but he is giving a tacit encouragement to future migrants to pick up and leave their home country and put themselves in danger and enrich the criminal smuggling organizations to come here because they know, they will get an ‘all-of-government,’ and ‘all-of-economy’ welcome,” she added. “Even if they come illegally, even if they lie to get in, even if they give their children up to be trafficked.”

Mayorkas hinted at the broader pro-migration agenda during his press conference:

It is because of the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security — and across the federal enterprise — that we will dig out of the cruelty of the past administration, and we will rebuild our nation’s asylum system, and all of our humanitarian programs, of which we have been historically so proud as a leader in the world.

“We are not saying [to the migrants] ‘Don’t come.’ We are saying, ‘Don’t come now.’ Because we will be able to deliver safe and orderly [legal paperwork] process to them as quickly as possible.”

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