Border Chief Alejandro Mayorkas: Our Priority Is Justice, Not Border Security

Americans should not have a secure border until they also provide justice for migrants, according to Alejandro Mayorkas, the pro-migration secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Mayorkas made the claim after being asked Tuesday by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR): “What should be a higher priority of the United States Government? Securing our border or giving amnesty to illegal aliens who are already here?”

“Justice is our priority,” Mayorkas declared at a Senate hearing, adding “That includes securing our border and providing relief to those [migrants] who qualify for it under our laws.”

Cotton asked Mayorkas to compare his border-security record to President Donald Trump’s border numbers: “Are you satisfied that two and a half times as many illegal migrants have crossed into this country this year compared to last year?”

“No, I’m not,” replied Mayorkas, who then added: “but worse is to promulgate and operationalize a policy that defies our values as a nation.”

In 2021, Mayorkas has allowed roughly one million illegal and conditionally-legal migrants from many foreign nations across the southern border with Mexico. He has also sought to bring in roughly one million migrants and several hundred thousand foreign contract workers. These legal and illegal migrants compete for the jobs and houses needed by Americans, including the roughly four million Americans who join the workforce each year.

Mayorkas “doesn’t even consider the possibility that there are competing [justice] interests here,” said Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. By not recognizing the damage caused to Americans by loose migration, Mayorkas subordinates the enforcement of Americans’ immigration laws to his own vision of justice for migrants, said Krikorian:

There’s no question of justice for Americans, whether less skilled Americans, whether it is American people in general who have an interest in sovereign borders. What he’s saying is that there’s only one aspect of justice that’s relevant here — and that is justice for illegal aliens.

Legal and illegal immigration imposes huge economic, civic, and personal costs on Americans — often unjust, and frequently lethal.

Labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents.  Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, and widens regional wealth gaps. Migration also radicalizes Americans’ democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

Mayorkas is a child refugee from Cuba and a pro-migration zealot who is opening many doors in the border for economic migrants.

In June, for example, he argued that the dignity of migrants is the “foremost” duty of his agency. In May, he said the agency’s “highest priority” is the return of lawfully deported adults to live with their left-behind children in the United States. In December 2020, he claimed an amnesty would raise wages for Americans.

In April 2021, he said migrant-owned companies “are the backbone of our communities — and of our country.” In September 2021, he reminded migrants that they can claim fear of torture to avoid a quick expulsion. In 2013, Mayorkas declared  that Americans’ homeland is “a nation that always has been and forever will remain a Nation of Immigrants.”

In numerous events, including the Senate hearing, Mayorkas has insisted that the nation’s values require a welcome for migrants — even though less than one-third of Americans support the “Nation of Immigrants” claim.

“In this administration’s view, Americans don’t have any claim to justice with regard to immigration — the only justice concern is that of foreigners,” Krikorian said, adding:

To the extent the left wants there even to be an immigration policy, [it prefers it] be focused on giving every single person in the world who wants to move here an opportunity to make a [asylum] case — regardless of the numerical limits that Congress has enacted. That’s what asylum is [to the left] — its an end-run around the [annual] numerical limits … It is intended to be a way of ignoring the concepts of numerical limits on immigration.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, backed by Democratic voters, and rests on the solidarity that Americans owe to each other.