Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave the most revealing interview of his career recently, providing a fascinating look inside the mind of the anti-borders ideologue running the agency charged with protecting America’s borders.
While Mayorkas and other leading Biden Administration officials often like to disassemble and deflect from their real views on immigration issues, sometimes they let the mask slip, and that’s exactly what Mayorkas did during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival earlier this month.
During the interview, Mayorkas smeared his critics as bigots, articulated his opposition to deporting illegal aliens, and even went as far as to suggest that Americans who support stronger border security measures are themselves threats to national security. Throughout the remarkably candid interview, Mayorkas articulated the passions and frustrations of the anti-borders movement, and articulated his worldview in a way that he rarely has before.
“The divisiveness in our country’s political life is preventing progress that our country desperately needs, and that’s not only with respect to immigration,” Mayorkas said at one point.
Here, Mayorkas seems peeved that Americans will not simply shut up and accept his project to remake America. In no area of public policy has the Biden Administration taken more heat than on immigration, and for good reason. More than 10 million illegal aliens have crossed the southern border since Joe Biden took office, leading to human tragedies and economic hardships for American citizens.
Mayorkas is so out of touch that he expected Americans to take the upheaval in their communities without complaint. As the chief architect of the Biden Administration’s pro-illegal immigration agenda, the secretary is now seething about the blowback his policies have received. When Mayorkas complains about the lack of “progress” on the immigration issue, he is expressing frustration that pushback from the American people has upset his ability to fully implement his destructive agenda.
At another point during the interview, Mayorkas reiterated a vicious, but commonly-used smear against his critics, painting those opposed to lawless mass immigration as racists and bigots.
“It is not the first time in history that some elements of a society have pointed to migrants as a source of social ills for which they are not responsible. That is a phenomenon that is not unique to the United States, historically and right now,” Mayorkas said.
For years, anti-borders activists have compared immigration enforcement action to some of history’s worst atrocities, and compared public servants who enforce immigration law to some of history’s greatest villains. While Mayorkas did not explicitly make this comparison, it is clear he was doing so implicitly. He views the deportation of illegal aliens–a necessary proceeding for any nation that wishes to sustain itself–as evil, and this has been reflected in his policies. Months after taking office, DHS released new guidelines, essentially announcing to the world that illegal aliens not deemed as public safety or national security threats would be allowed to stay in the country.
Being in the country illegally should be enough on its own to merit deportation. Inviting foreign nationals to not just enter the country illegally, but allowing them to stay here indefinitely as long as they don’t commit a heinous crime is an attack on the rule of law, but Mayorkas smears anyone who points this out as evil and bigoted.
Not content with smearing his critics as bigots, Mayorkas also attacked them as threats to U.S. national security.
Accusing his opponents of being threats to national security is especially rich, considering nobody has done more to put U.S. national security at risk than the secretary himself. Because of Mayorkas’s policies, a record number of suspected terrorists have entered the U.S. illegally in recent years, and security experts have warned that the wide-open U.S. border has put the country at risk of another 9/11-style terrorist attacks.
But, the irony of Mayorkas’s comments disguises their threatening nature. He genuinely views his critics as national security threats, and as head of DHS has the power to weaponize the powers of the federal government against them. After all, this is the same man who commissioned a “Disinformation Governance Board” meant to censor political opponents of the Biden Administration’s, before public outcry led to the Board’s demise. Mayorkas is dangerous, not just because of his anti-borders worldview, but because of his authoritarian inclinations.
The Mayorkas doctrine is one which welcomes potential terrorists and criminals to illegally cross the U.S. border while viewing law-abiding Americans as the nation’s real threats. America’s most dangerous bureaucrat may have just a few months left in office, but he appears determined to use them to impose his deranged worldview on our institutions to the greatest extent possible.
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.