Alejandro Mayorkas expects ‘surge’ at the border next month when Title 42 ends

The Biden administration’s top two immigration officials on Tuesday painted a grim picture of what’s in store for the southern border when Title 42 ends next month — warning lawmakers, in separate testimony, of an expected surge in border crossings and a shortage of beds at detention facilities.

“We do anticipate a surge in the number of encounters,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, acknowledging that the end of the pandemic-era policy that allowed for the swift deportation of migrants will lead to thousands more illegal immigrants entering the country each day. 

Mayorkas didn’t provide the panel with an estimate on how many more migrants will be allowed to enter the country after the end of Title 42, but he did not push back when one senator suggested that the amount of asylum seekers crossing the border could double to 11,000 per day in May. 

During the hearing, the DHS chief called border security a top priority and insisted his department was working to find solutions to mitigate the expected surge, including with its request for $4.7 billion in emergency funding designated for a Southwest Border Contingency Fund.

The fund, included in President Biden’s 2024 budget request, would provide additional resources to DHS in the event increased migration along the Southwest border exceeds the expected number of encounters, Mayorkas said.

Republican lawmakers were not buying his assurances. 

“You just sit there with a blank look on your face,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). 

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pledged to introduce a vote of no confidence resolution against the secretary. 

“I stand at the ready to receive articles of impeachment from the House and conduct an impeachment trial in this body,” Marshall said. “But in the meantime, I think the Senate must show our colleagues in the House that we’ve had enough of the failures from the Department of Homeland Security and believe that the secretary is not fit to faithfully carry out the duties of his office.”

In the House, meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Tae Johnson on Tuesday explained to lawmakers that his agency doesn’t have enough beds and enough funding for all migrants caught crossing the border illegally after Biden’s budget slashed detention capacity by about a quarter.

When asked by Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, what is required for ICE and DHS to detain all eligible migrants without having to release any due to bed or budget constraints, Johnson responded, “More beds than probably exist in the public sector sector and funding that we don’t have.”

Johnson said that he had sought thousands more beds for detainees in the agency’s new budget, which the Biden administration rejected – giving him a maximum of 34,000 detention beds. 

The ICE chief further told the panel that COVID-19 restrictions also limit his ability to fill up all the beds currently at his disposal.  

 And in reality, he can’t even fill all of those because of coronavirus restrictions.

“We’re using about 73% of our capacity right now,” Johnson noted. 

“On any given year, even before COVID, we can only detain about 200,000 people a year, maybe in some of the better years up to 250,000 in a given year. So, you do have to make tough choices on how to use your resources,” he added. 

In fiscal year 2022, border officials encountered a record 2.3 million migrants attempting to cross into the US. 

Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee that with the current lay of the land, thousands of migrants apprehended at the border will have to be released before they can be deported – including some who may have criminal records. 

“Most of the folks we are releasing from custody will not have a criminal history,” Johnson said, before acknowledging that ICE will have a tough time verifying criminal histories for migrants hailing from dozens of countries.

“We don’t have access to many of those countries’ records,” Johnson admitted.