September 26, 2021

DHS Secretary Says What We’ve All Been Thinking: The Immigration System Is “Completely Broken”

But the man in charge won’t be the one to fix it.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

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Speaking with candor on Meet the Press on Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged that “we are working in a completely broken system.” No kidding.

After a week in which Border Patrol agents on horseback corralled Haitian migrants at the Texas border with whip-like cords and shipped thousands back to the island country—leading to the resignation of the US Special Envoy for Haiti—Mayorkas’ admission seems like a bit of an understatement. 

But Mayorkas doesn’t appear ready to fix that broken system. In the same interview, Mayorkas defended the decision to send 2,000 migrants back to Haiti, though many of them have not stepped foot in their home country for years. Mayorkas said the expulsion was necessary under Title 42, a public health policy invoked by President Trump as justification to turn asylum seekers away at the border.

“The Centers for Disease Control has a Title 42 authority that we exercise to protect the migrants themselves, to protect the local communities” Mayorkas said. “They are subject to removal, they are subject to Title 42 expulsion.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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