United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas shared his thoughts Friday on immigration and threats to national security in an interview at the Paramount Theatre during The Texas Tribune Festival.
Mayorkas talked with PBS News Hour White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López, with the majority of the interview focusing on border policy.
When asked about Texas’ use of the state National Guard in Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, including allegations of excessive force and dangerous prevention tactics by the Guard, Mayorkas said some of those incidents are “the subject of ongoing legal challenge,” and that the government “has stepped in.”
“This is the first time in my 20-22 years of government service that I have seen a state act in direct contravention of national interests and in the service of … politics,” Mayorkas said.
Barrón-López pressed Mayorkas on President Joe Biden’s executive order severely limiting asylum allowances until border encounters fall below a certain rate for a sustained period of time.
The executive order is currently the subject of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrants’ rights groups. She asked about recent reporting by the New York Times that the Biden administration is considering updating the order, which Mayorkas rebutted.
“(The current) restrictive conditions, by the way, do not foreclose asylum,” Mayorkas said. “What we have done is raised the bar to make an asylum claim, because, quite frankly, the asylum system is in desperate need of reform.”
While the executive order does not prevent asylum entirely, it does severely limit the ability of most migrants attempting to enter the country illegally to be granted asylum in the vast majority of instances.
The potential update to the order would require border encounters to remain under the specified limit for multiple consecutive weeks, instead of the current seven-day requirement, according to the News York Times.
Mayorkas was also asked about Vice President Kamala Harris’ role in the administration’s border response. He would not go into detail about her work much beyond saying that she has been “a driving force” in “ensuring the government … addresses root causes” and “driving private industry.” Mayorkas instead turned the conversation to Congress’ lack of action on border policy, citing the failed border bill blocked by Senate Republicans in May.
Beyond questions over immigration policy, Mayorkas fielded questions around former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. Barrón-López cited Trump’s statement that “immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country,” which has been criticized for resembling the words of Adolf Hitler. Mayorkas, whose Jewish mother survived the Holocaust before immigrating to America, condemned the use of this type of language from anyone.
“That rhetoric … is odious,” Mayorkas said. “People have died because of that rhetoric. My mother’s family, her father’s eight brothers … died because of that rhetoric.”
The final portion of the interview was devoted to domestic threats, including a conversation around school shootings in the U.S. The conversation comes less than three days after a shooting in Georgia left two students and two teachers dead, the deadliest in the state’s history.
Though Mayorkas declined to discuss Georgia’s shooting specifically, he recommended the phrase “See Something, Say Something” as a motto that should be applied to students that may be withdrawn or isolated.
“We have to make sure that we, as fellow citizens, are educated as to what those signs are,” Mayorkas said. “It could be a need for help.”
He pointed to the 2022 shooting in Uvalde as an example of when recognition of an individual exhibiting those signs would have been vital.
Barrón-López noted that in the Georgia shooting, the suspect was interviewed by law enforcement up to a year before the attack. Mayorkas doubled down on the slogan, but did not respond to the question directly.
“It’s not just Uvalde … we need to sensitize people to signs of alienation or risks,” Mayorkas said. “The goal is prevention … to be able to deliver that help.”