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

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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.”

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate