Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who came under attacks including an impeachment during his four years in office, has insisted in a new interview that several aspects of border security were successful during his tenure.
"The border right now is more secure than it was at the end of 2019, the last year before the pandemic struck," Mayorkas told NPR, the outlet reported Wednesday.
"The number of individuals encountered at the border on a daily basis is lower than it was at that time, and that has been consistently the case now for approximately six months," he added.
However, Mayorkas said that he does not think the Biden administration communicated the "challenges of migration at a historic level since World War II."
He also alluded to disagreements in the administration but said that once a decision was made, it moved "forward as a team" and will continue to do that "until this administration comes to a close."
The number of migrants and asylum-seekers peaked at the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2023. Mayorkas said that was because of circumstances that were beyond the control of the White House, but House Republicans brought two articles of impeachment against him in early 2024. The Democrat-controlled Senate rejected both charges.
Meanwhile, the secretary said deportation climbed sharply over the past year and that fewer people are crossing the border.
President Joe Biden took executive action in June in an effort to block asylum-seekers, which has led to the decrease in border crossings.
Mayorkas said the peak in crossings in late 2023 came not because of actions of the administration but because IME, the Mexican enforcement agency, "did not have funds."
Biden dispatched Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Mexico to speak with leaders about the importance of funding the agency.
"It's as though we did not have any Border Patrol presence on our side of the border," he recalled. "There was no interdiction of migrants seeking to reach the southern border between the United States and Mexico."
Then-Mexican President Lopez Obrador ended up funding the IME, and the numbers of border crossers dropped, said Mayorkas.
"But the most precipitous drop really occurred upon our swift and effective implementation of the president's proclamation in June of 2024 that restricted the ability of individuals to claim asylum at our southern border," he added.
NPR, however, pointed out that numbers were drastically increasing at the border up until 2023, and Mayorkas said the reason action was not taken sooner is "multipart."
"In the first part of our administration, we were climbing out of the COVID-19 pandemic," he said, adding there was "tremendous" pressure to maintain the Title 42 public health order President-elect Donald Trump had put in place during his first administration.
The order was lifted, and the administration sought supplemental funding for the immigration system twice, Mayorkas said, but "Congress did not provide it."
And then, a bipartisan border security bill was "politically torpedoed," said Mayorkas.
But when asked if there was anything he would do differently, he said he chooses to "look forward."
"We provide our input to those who will govern in the future, and we move forward. But there's no question that the narrative was not a successful one," said Mayorkas.
He also insisted that the model the Biden administration built to restrict asylum while building lawful and safe pathways for immigration "should be sustained."
"We have delivered the border and those accessible pathways to the incoming administration," he said.