The Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, appeared for the first time this Wednesday since taking office before a committee of the House of Representatives to speak, among other topics, about what congressmen have described as a humanitarian crisis on the border.
During the question session, Mayorkas rejected the insinuations of Republican congressmen that the government is encouraging immigrants to come to the country illegally, but assured that asylum seekers have the right to request asylum.
“It is a
right recognized by law in the United States.
And a person applying for asylum is not breaking the law by doing so, ”he said during an exchange with Republican Congressman Dan Bishop of North Carolina.
"As a law enforcement officer, I enforce the liability laws, as well as the humanitarian laws that Congress passed," he added.
At the insistence of the Republicans on whether they are encouraging immigrants to come, Mayorkas reiterated: "
The border is not open
."
As the president, Joe Biden, put it, the message for those trying to enter from the southeast of the border is: "Don't come."
“We have taken a number of steps to address the increasing number of unaccompanied children at the border," he explained, "we have increased our ability to hold children until the Department of Health (HHS) can take them in for as long as Identify and screen children's sponsors.
We are increasing HHS capacity and I have directed FEMA to support this effort. "
[The Biden Administration activates FEMA resources for the shelter and transfer of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border]
More than 4,200 unaccompanied immigrant children remained in short-term detention facilities of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as of Sunday, including some not suitable to house minors.
The agency took in 561 more on Monday, double the recent average, a second official told The Associated Press news agency.
Despite pressure from Republican congressmen, Mayorkas resisted calling
the situation on the border a
crisis
.
But he assured that a crisis "is when a nation is willing to tear a nine-year-old child from the hands of its parents and separate that family to deter future migration. For me, that is a humanitarian crisis."
"What the President has committed to and what I commit and execute is to ensure that we have a
functioning immigration system
and that migration to our country is safe, orderly, and humane."
In a document published before his appearance, Mayorkas pointed out that the situation on the southern border “cannot and will
not change overnight
, due in large part to the damage caused in the last four years." "The Department of Security Nacional is responding to historic and unprecedented challenges at the border, including the arrival of record levels of unaccompanied children, "he added.
On Tuesday, he said that the United States is expected to reach the highest number of people detained at the border with Mexico in two decades.
"We are about to find more individuals on the southwest border than in the last 20 years. We are expelling most single adults and families. We are not expelling unaccompanied children," he said.
With information from AP, NBC News and NPR.