Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will visit Arizona on Wednesday to tout the decrease in illegal migrant numbers after President Biden took executive action on asylum processing three weeks ago.
Mayorkas will speak to reporters in Tucson. Arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen more than 40% since the executive order went into effect, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Border Patrol's seven-day average of illegal migrant encounters dropped from well over 5,000 to about 2,200, according to the latest Customs and Border Protection numbers obtained by Fox News. Mayorkas said border encounters were "moving in the right direction" in an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday morning.
"You correctly note that the number of encounters at the southwest border have decreased in the three weeks that we've been implementing the president's proclamation by more than 40%," Mayorkas told host Mika Brzezinski, adding it was a "remarkable implementation" by immigration enforcement agencies.
"We are conducting more removal flights than ever before. We are moving people through the system, and those who do not qualify are being removed or returned more rapidly."
The latest Border Patrol figures are welcome news for President Biden, who must defend his record from withering attacks by former President Trump at the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday.
The U.S. has seen record numbers of migrant crossings at the border, with more than 2.4 million in FY 23 alone, on top of three years of the highest crossings ever seen. Republicans and Trump have hammered Biden over the crisis, arguing that it is his policies — and the rolling back of Trump-era policies — that have fueled the crisis.
Trump lambasted Biden's border policies at a rally in Philadelphia over the weekend and accused him of "releasing illegal criminals into our communities to rape, pillage, plunder and to kill."
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"Just this week, a 12-year-old girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungaray, was tied up, stripped, and strangled to death after walking to a 7-Eleven," Trump said, referencing the suspected murder and sexual assault of a Texas girl who was found strangled to death in a creek last week.
"Charged with Jocelyn's heinous murder are two illegal alien savages that Joe Biden recently set loose into our country. They came across our border claiming they feared for their lives in Venezuela."
Trump has promised the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history if elected, and to terminate "every Open Border policy of the Biden administration." He has also promised to deploy special forces to the border and reinstate his 2017 travel ban.
Biden, on the contrary, has argued that Congress must pass reforms to fix what he calls a "broken" immigration system. He has proposed legislation that Republicans oppose which would grant a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants present in the U.S.
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He also backed a bipartisan Senate bill introduced earlier this year, but it has failed to pick up steam in the upper chamber. Biden has blamed Trump for stifling the bill, which included additional funding for border operations and a mechanism to shut down crossings after a certain level.
"Republicans in Congress, not all, walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to," he said in February.
With no progress in Congress, Biden took unilateral action to further limit asylum claims by migrants once average border encounters exceed 2,500 a day. Last week, he also announced a deportation shield for some illegal immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens. He has repeatedly said, however, that it is not enough, and he needs Congress to act in order to fix the system.
Mayorkas reinforced the president's arguments on MSNBC, calling on Congress to "fix" the "broken immigration system."
"Remember that our detention capacity — and this is not specific to our administration, this has been historic, ever since the 90s, when I was a federal prosecutor — our detention capacity is not sufficient to meet the number of people we encounter," he said. "We have to release people into the United States when they are in immigration enforcement proceedings. And we put them on alternatives to detention when that is necessary from an enforcement perspective."
House Republicans approved articles of impeachment against Mayorkas earlier this year, accusing him of "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" and breach of public trust.
However, the Democratic-controlled Senate had the articles declared unconstitutional and dismissed without a trial. Mayorkas last visited the U.S.-Mexico border in May.
Fox News' Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This report has been updated to clarify that Mayorkas visited the U.S.-Mexico border in May 2024.
