WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s immigration policies after the deaths of 53 migrants who were abandoned in the back of a tractor-trailer, saying U.S. immigration officials had repeatedly warned against traveling to the southern border.
“We have said repeatedly and continue to warn people not to take the dangerous journey,” Mayorkas said in an interview with “Face the Nation.” “So tragically we saw in San Antonio, Texas, one of the possible tragic outcomes of this dangerous journey and so many people not even making it that far into the hands of exploitative smugglers. And we continue to enforce immigration law as is our legal responsibility.”
The minister said migrants traveling through Central America to the US-Mexico border often receive false information from conduits encouraging them to attempt the journey.
“They leave their lives, their savings in the hands of these exploitative organizations, these criminal organizations that don’t care about their lives and are only out to make a profit,” he said.
The deaths of 53 migrants abandoned in a tractor trailer in the sweltering San Antonio heat appear to be the deadliest human smuggling case in modern US history. Federal charges have been filed against four people allegedly connected to the death.
Mayorkas said the Biden administration is working closely with Mexico to break up migrant caravans seeking to cross the U.S. border, and said dealing with the large number of migrant arrivals along the southern border is “a regional challenge that requires regional response. “
“These are very sophisticated transnational criminal organizations. They have evolved over the last 30 years,” he said. “In the 1990s I was chasing them and they were much more basic. Now they are very sophisticated, they use technology and they are highly organized transnational criminal enterprises.”
But Mayorkas said the U.S. has also stepped up its efforts through technology and manpower, with border authorities rescuing more than 10,000 people this year.
“Can a truck go through complicated means? Sometimes, yes,” he said. “But I have to say that we have interdicted more drugs at ports of entry than ever before. We saved more migrants. We see a challenge that is truly regional, hemispheric in scope, and we are addressing it accordingly.”
As the Biden administration continues to defend its immigration policies after record levels of migrant arrests in May and a deadly smuggling campaign in Texas, it got a victory from the Supreme Court on Thursday when justices cleared the way for the administration to release Trump’s “Stay in Mexico” policy of the era.
Under the program, introduced under former President Donald Trump, asylum seekers had to wait for their court proceedings outside the US
Mayorkas said the department was “pleased” with the decision and said the Stay in Mexico program had “endemic flaws” and “undue human costs.”
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