GOP lawmakers ask Mayorkas for documents on warnings from DHS to Biden on immigration

GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Tom McClintock (Calif.) on Tuesday asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to provide all documentation of communication between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Biden transition team regarding the administration’s immigration policy.

“As the Biden border crisis continues to worsen by the day, President Biden and his Administration refuse to accept responsibility for the growing humanitarian and security crisis,” the Republican lawmakers said in a letter to Mayorkas. “This refusal to accept responsibility is startling in light of a news report that suggests the Biden Administration was warned that reversing President Trump’s successful immigration policies would lead to a surge at the border. We write to request documentation relating to these warnings.”

Jordan and McClintock, the ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, respectively, cited a report from NPR in which former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said DHS staff members had warned the Biden transition against reversing former President Trump’s immigration policies, saying it could lead to another crisis at the border.

“There is no consequence anymore,” Wolf said in the NPR interview. “The administration is treating this as though it’s a capacity issue and not an illegal behavior issue, and that’s a fundamental difference.”

“Instead of heeding these warnings, President Biden signed several executive orders dismantling the Trump Administration’s immigration programs and policies,” the lawmakers wrote.

Mayorkas has previously placed blame for the current border crisis on the Trump administration.

“It is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration. There was a system in place in both Republican and Democratic administrations, that was torn down during the Trump administration, and that is why the challenge is more acute than it ever has been before,” Mayorkas said CNN’s “State of the Union” earlier in March. “We are rebuilding the orderly systems that the Trump administration tore down to avoid the need for these children to actually take the perilous journey.”

Jordan and McClintock requested that Mayorkas provide “all documents and communications” between the Biden transition team and the DHS as well as any documents created or produced during such meetings. They gave Mayorkas a deadline of 5 p.m. on April 13.

President Biden has shot down suggestions that his policies are to blame for the large influx of migrants arriving at the border, instead painting it as a typical occurrence at this time of year.

“The reason they’re coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, No 1. No. 2, they’re coming because of the circumstances in their country,” he said during his first press conference as president last week. “So we’re building back up the capacity that should have been maintained and built upon that Trump dismantled. It’s going to take time.”