President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, Alejandro Mayokras, is unable to say just how many convicted criminal illegal aliens are arriving every month at the United States-Mexico border.
During a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Mayorkas failed to disclose to Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) the number of illegal aliens arriving at the southern border who not only have U.S. criminal convictions but convictions in their native country.
The exchange went as follows:
LANKFORD: What percentage of the individuals that are encountered at our southern border do we know their criminal history from the country they’re coming from? I’m not talking about if they have an American criminal history or they are on our Terror[ism] Watch List, that we know their criminal history of the country they’re coming from. Do we know that history?
MAYORKAS: I will have to get back to you on that Senator whether we have the capability of identifying the percentage which is what you have…
LANKFORD: It is my understanding that we don’t know the criminal history of the vast majority. Can you give me an estimate on this … give me a guess.
MAYORKAS: I understand. I’m quite hesitant to guess on information that is so important to our mission but I will certainly get back to you with any information we can provide…
LANKFORD: It is incredibly important because I think there’s an assumption that the American people feel that the 2.4 million plus individuals that were encountered just in the last 12 months have been vetted in some way at our southern border and they’ve been checked. And we don’t know if these individuals are fleeing poverty or fleeing from the law. We don’t know. I mean, there’s a check to see if they have an American criminal history record but we don’t know if they have a criminal history record where they are coming from.
MAYORKAS: … we conduct screening and vetting of individuals whom we encounter. We have a robust screening and vetting process. It actually is recurrent vetting and it is not just with respect to criminal history in the United States.
LANKFORD: I’d like to get a good guess as to how many people we know their criminal history when they’re coming in.
MAYORKAS: As I mentioned Senator, I’ll get back to you to see if we have that data, if so, I will certainly provide it to you.
The testimony comes two days after Mayorkas, likewise, failed to definitively state that none of the roughly two million border crossers and illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. interior since Biden took office are convicted criminals.
“In Fiscal Year 2022, you have now released 1.4 million into the United States and my question to you now is can you guarantee that none of those people have criminal records?” Rep. Kat Cammack asked, to which Mayorkas did not answer directly.
C-SPANIn April, Mayorkas failed to guarantee in congressional testimony that none of the illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorism Watch List or No-Fly List, apprehended at the southern border at the time, had been released into American communities.
Biden’s expansive Catch and Release network continues welcoming nearly hundreds of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. interior every month with the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Catholic Charities.
Last month, for instance, Breitbart News exclusively reported that at least 192,000 border crossers and illegal aliens entered American communities after arriving at the southern border. This is a foreign population nearly 19 times the size of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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