Alejandro Mayorkas walked into a Washington event on Tuesday and, without much fanfare, began dismantling the very narrative he spent years constructing in front of Congress.
The former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security sat down with Politico journalist Alex Burns at the outlet’s Security Summit, where the conversation quickly turned into an uncomfortable public reckoning with the Biden administration’s immigration track record.
Speaking candidly, Mayorkas called America’s immigration system “broken” — a characterization that carries significant weight coming from the man who was responsible for overseeing it for four years.
He went further, acknowledging that the threshold migrants had to clear when claiming a “credible fear of persecution” was simply set too low, and that the standard opened the door for far too many individuals to gain entry into the United States.
By the time President Biden entered the final year of his presidency, more than 8 million migrants had already crossed into the country — a staggering number that would eventually force the administration’s hand.
Biden signed an executive order targeting illegal crossings, a move first reported by the New York Post in May 2024, but the action came only after years of mounting political pressure and what critics described as willful inaction.
Democrats themselves grew frustrated with the delay, with at least one party member publicly labeling the administration’s sluggish response to the border crisis “political malpractice.”
At the Politico event, Burns asked Mayorkas point-blank whether the administration’s failure to act sooner handed Donald Trump the keys to the White House.
Mayorkas refused to go there. “I am not in a position to speculate,” he said, then offered a telling aside: “but I will tell you that I would be far more better rested and less punched.”
That response is difficult to square with the portrait Mayorkas painted for Congress during his tenure. He stood before lawmakers on multiple occasions and declared the border “secure,” insisting illegal crossings were under control and that his department had the situation in hand.
Those assurances ultimately cost him. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Mayorkas in February 2024, marking only the second time in American history that a sitting cabinet secretary had been removed by impeachment.
The vote did little to change his public posture — at least initially. Weeks after the impeachment, Mayorkas returned to Capitol Hill and told a House committee, “With the authorities and the funding that we have, it is as secure as it can be.”
Tuesday’s appearance told a different story. Mayorkas credited the June 2024 executive action with producing real results and expressed satisfaction with how the policy was executed.
“I was very pleased that in June of 2024, we took executive action that, I thought, made reforms that were sensible and that proved successful,” he told Burns.
He described the strategy as two-pronged — pairing stricter enforcement with expanded legal entry options designed to reduce reliance on smuggling networks.
“Our tougher border stance in June of ’24 was coupled with an increased focus on providing lawful pathways for people to arrive at the United States outside the hands of smugglers — more secure and more humanitarian. Those two combined — our numbers dropped 70, 75%,” Mayorkas stated.
The event also surfaced questions about one of the darkest chapters of the Biden immigration era: the disappearance of tens of thousands of migrant children who entered the country through the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, working alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Reports indicate that more than 7,300 child trafficking tips went uninvestigated under Biden’s watch.
Burns asked Mayorkas whether former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra should be held accountable for losing track of those children.
Mayorkas declined to point fingers. “I know of the press reports, but I don’t know of the data,” he said.
He elaborated on his reluctance, stating, “it’s very difficult for me to judge the competency or performance of another cabinet secretary, because one has to be in that position, understand the opportunities for success, the challenges that one confronts and I don’t think it’s fair for me to judge over the fence.”
