DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says border more secure than before pandemic : NPR

NPR’s Steve Inskeep speaks with outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who says the border is more secure now than in 2019.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Alejandro Mayorkas steps down one week from today. President Biden’s secretary of homeland security ends four contentious years in which Republicans accused him of failing to secure the border. When he came by our studios for an exit interview, Mayorkas made an assertion.

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: The border right now is more secure than it was at the end of 2019, the last year before the pandemic struck.

INSKEEP: He says fewer people are crossing these days than during parts of the first Trump administration.

MAYORKAS: And that has been consistently the case now for approximately six months.

INSKEEP: In other words, Mayorkas contends the border security that President-elect Trump promised was already delivered by the administration Trump defeated. He says the Biden administration managed a surge of migrants that peaked in 2023.

Why not do that years earlier?

MAYORKAS: The answer is multipart.

INSKEEP: Critics blame Biden’s border changes at the start of his administration, while Mayorkas points to setbacks later. Courts stopped Biden from using pandemic restrictions to turn away new arrivals, and then came negotiations with Congress for extra resources.

MAYORKAS: Which proved successful until they were politically torpedoed.

INSKEEP: Republicans sank their own bill at Trump’s urging during the election year. Biden finally acted on his own, but Trump won in November.

MAYORKAS: I don’t think we prevailed in communicating to the American people successfully the challenges of migration at an historic level since World War II.

INSKEEP: Now Democrats hand over power to an administration that has promised more than border security. They’ve promised mass deportations of people here without legal status. We wanted Mayorkas’ perspective on what may be coming, since he’s overseen many deportations himself.

How many people have you deported, say, in the last year?

MAYORKAS: I believe the number is well over 250,000 – a very significant number.

INSKEEP: Is that higher than it would’ve been a few years ago then?

MAYORKAS: Yes, it is. And we have built that capacity, and we have built those processes.

INSKEEP: And I’m just trying to think about what is necessary from a layman’s perspective to have capacity. You need agents. You need courts. You need court rulings. You need airplanes, in some cases, or buses. You need a country that will take them, right?

MAYORKAS: We also need facilities in which to detain individuals. We need legal personnel to represent the government in proceedings. If the administration that is coming in intends to execute on what it has articulated publicly, it will need substantial additional resources to do so.

INSKEEP: The president-elect has talked about a mass deportation. As someone who knows the law, as someone who knows the systems, what is practical?

MAYORKAS: Well, I believe Tom Homan has spoken of prioritizing individuals unlawfully present in the United States who pose a public safety or national security risk.

INSKEEP: He’s referring to Trump’s chosen border security czar. Mayorkas says Tom Homan’s idea of who to deport sounds familiar to him.

MAYORKAS: That is precisely what we have been doing and have done.

INSKEEP: I want to underline that. You’re saying that they’re promising to do the thing that you’re already doing?

MAYORKAS: On September 30 of 2021, I issued immigration enforcement guidelines that identified categories of individuals for a prioritized enforcement effort – individuals who pose a threat to our national security, individuals who pose a threat to our public safety and individuals who pose a threat to our border security.

INSKEEP: What about someone who’s committed a crime? Are they automatically considered someone who poses a threat?

MAYORKAS: I think there are a number of factors. It depends on the crime. What, if, for example, it’s a misdemeanor that a majority of people would say doesn’t necessarily constitute a public safety threat but is nevertheless a violation of our laws. It becomes an issue of discretion.

INSKEEP: An administration with limited resources tries to focus on the greatest threats. What is not clear is how many more people without legal status the new administration will target. For example, there’s the question of mixed-status families – homes where U.S. citizens live with people lacking legal status. One such person, Ricardo Ocampo Hernandez, spoke with NPR last year.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

RICARDO OCAMPO HERNANDEZ: I’ve lived in the United States for over 32 years, and I still am undocumented.

INSKEEP: He married a U.S. citizen, and they had three children who were citizens. Last month, NBC asked President-elect Trump what he would do with such families.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all back.

INSKEEP: In other words, the whole family should leave, including its U.S. citizens.

What are the legal, practical and moral aspects of that situation as you think about it?

MAYORKAS: So what President Biden did was he took executive action. We termed it Keeping Families Together. We provided a path for keeping that family together and…

INSKEEP: In the United States?

MAYORKAS: In the United States. That was thwarted in the courts.

INSKEEP: Republican-led states sued, arguing Biden was going too far without action by Congress, and last year, a judge agreed.

MAYORKAS: And I believe in keeping families together, and we saw the very tragic results of the prior administration’s family separation policy.

INSKEEP: If you’re going to keep families together and if Congress and the courts won’t let them stay, Mayorkas says the remaining option is for them to go.

If the new administration keeps families together by deporting American citizens, what do you make of that?

MAYORKAS: Well, they wouldn’t – the American citizens wouldn’t be technically deported. They would…

INSKEEP: They would be agreeing to leave with their…

MAYORKAS: They would be…

INSKEEP: …Relatives?

MAYORKAS: …Accompanying deported relatives, sometimes the very relatives upon whom they rely to live.

INSKEEP: Would they have any legal defense against that situation?

MAYORKAS: They would not – presumably the removal, the deportation of the individuals would be pursuant to law. Those – that’s a very difficult choice, and some would posit, in some ways, an inhumane choice to compel.

INSKEEP: Alejandro Mayorkas says it is not something the Biden administration wanted to do, but it is something a new president has said he is determined to try.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.