Rep. Mark Green (R-NC), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, slammed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during an interview over the weekend over his claims that the number of illegal border crossing have plummeted in recent days.
Green’s remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Dana Bash come after the U.S. Border Patrol experienced the highest number of illegal border crossings in history last week at approximately 83,000.
“What the secretary failed to say is that this week has seen more crossings than any time, any week in our history. Yes, there was some anticipation, and so people started coming across at higher numbers, in fact, record-breaking numbers, at the first part of the week,” Green said. “But in the latter part of the week, a judge ruled that they can’t do their plan of just releasing without a court date, which Secretary Mayorkas has said on the news was a bad idea. But that court ruling said he can’t do that. The drug cartels have responded, and the numbers have fallen off for a couple of days.”
“But he admitted just moments ago that they can’t predict the peak. CBP said 40 percent increase is expected with Title 42 gone,” he added. “That’s another nine million people in two years. I mean, they have already let 5.04 million encounters and 1.5 million got-aways as they have tried to manage border security and not secure our border.”
Green said that Congress needed to fix the issue of border security first before working on trying to get the immigration system overhauled.
Green said that he is going to be holding Mayorkas responsible for his actions, or lack thereof, saying that he knows “for a fact he lied to Congress under oath.”
“We have a five-phase — which I have articulated before — a five-phase accountability plan. We’re going to look into his dereliction of duty, the laws he’s intentionally violated and not followed,” he said. “His job is to execute the laws, not write them or make them up himself. And his interim final rule to just speed people into the country is an excellent example of them just making up the laws, which we are the ones, we write the laws in Congress. He executes the laws, right, as the executive branch.”
“We will show the human cost of this open border, fentanyl mothers, Angel Moms, that little baby in Florida crawling around on a VRBO that encountered fentanyl and died,” he continued. “I mean, every American is at risk with this open border. I would be negligent in my job not to look into this guy’s performance.”
WATCH: