PRESS RELEASE Contact: press@congressionalintegrity.org
For Immediate Release
Date: July 25, 2023
Washington, D.C. – Tomorrow, Jim Jordan and his MAGA House Judiciary Committee are continuing their impeachment circus with a hearing featuring Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Instead of coming to the table with solutions to help fix our immigration system, Republicans are once again playing partisan, political games to harm President Biden and Democrats for purely political reasons. In response, Congressional Integrity Project executive director, Kyle Herrig, issued the following statement:
“President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have kept America safe. After six months of obsessive investigations, Jim Jordan has failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden so he and his fellow Republicans are grasping at straws trying to find someone to impeach. Despite Republican fear mongering, border encounters are at a two year low and border crossings have actually gone down after Title 42 expired and the chaos they claimed would happen did not materialize. MAGA Republicans want to impeach anyone at all costs no matter the state of the border or actual wrongdoing in order to distract from Donald Trump’s serious legal troubles. This is all part of their MAGA-fueled plan to hurt President Biden and Democrats in a pathetic attempt to help get Donald Trump re-elected.”
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Background:
Border Encounters Fell To Their Lowest Level In Two Years In June. The number of migrant encounters on the border plummeted in June 2023, falling to the lowest level in more than two years. The 144,571 encounters in June were a 30% drop from May, and the lowest since February 2021. June was the first full month of CBP data since the lifting of Title 42, a public health policy enacted during the pandemic that let border officials turn away migrants on public health grounds.
Border Encounters Declined By More Than 60 Percent In The Weeks After The End Of Title 42. Despite warnings of an overwhelming surge of border crossings, border agents encountered 70 percent fewer crossings in the three weeks following the end of Title 42, compared to the week before the policy expired. There were also 25 percent fewer encounters with migrants between ports of entry, which pose more of an enforcement challenge than encounters at checkpoints.
The Department Of Homeland Security Has Stopped The Entry Of Thousands Of Pounds Of Fentanyl In Just The Last Two Months. In June 2023, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans for an expanded effort to curb fentanyl trafficking at the border. In just the first two months of the campaign, law enforcement made 284 arrests and stopped the entry of nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl. DHS has launched Operation Artemis to use intelligence from previous operations to target trafficking and Operation Rolling Wave to boost inspections at border crossings, where 90% of fentanyl is trafficked primarily in cars and trucks. At the same time, the Justice Department announced sweeping indictments of members of the Sinaloa drug cartel and distributors in the United States. The State Department has also sanctioned entities in Mexico and China connected to fentanyl production and trafficking.