The House Oversight committee will hold its first hearing to probe the Biden administration over the border crisis.
The hearing, which will take place on Feb. 6, comes amid record surges in illegal immigration. The committee announced Thursday that it had called upon several southern Border Patrol sector chiefs and requested documents directly from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding the administration’s “role in undermining” border security efforts.(RELATED: ‘Told Us To Come’: Ahead Of President’s Visit, Illegal Immigrants Say They Crossed The Border Because Of Biden)
Federal authorities at the U.S-Mexico border encountered an all-time high of more than 250,000 migrants in December.
President Joe Biden made his first visit to the border on Jan. 8, when he traveled to El Paso, Texas, after instituting a number of policies to better the parole and admission systems mainly for migrants that might otherwise be expelled under Title 42, a Trump-era public health expulsion order. The president has put much of the blame on Congressional Republicans to implement solutions to ultimately fix the immigration system that he labels “broken.”
Migrants who evaded Border Patrol await their uncertain fate at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas (Jennie Taer//Daily Caller News Foundation)
Republicans, however, argue that the onus is on Biden.
“President Biden’s radical open borders agenda has ignited the worst border crisis in American history. The Biden Administration’s deliberate actions are fueling human smuggling, stimulating drug cartel operations, enabling deadly drugs such as fentanyl to flow into American communities, and encouraging illegal immigrants to flout U.S. immigration laws,” the committee’s chairman, James Comer, said in a statement Thursday.
“Republicans will hold the Biden Administration accountable for this ongoing humanitarian, national security, and public health crisis that has turned every town into a border town,” Comer added.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has threatened to impeach Mayorkas over the crisis he also pinned on Biden.
DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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