Secretary Mayorkas Delivers Remarks on a Press Call Regarding Border Numbers

Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas delivered the following remarks during a press call.

Thank you all for joining - Alejandro Mayorkas here, the Secretary of DHS.

In December, we again saw fewer border encounters than the monthly average for 2019. In fact, the number of encounters we experienced in December - 47,300 - is the lowest monthly number since July 2020, a year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a consistent trend we have seen since the President's proclamation went into effect last summer. Since then, encounters between Ports of Entry along the Southwest Border have dropped 60 percent.

We have continued to enforce tough consequences for those crossing the border unlawfully: in Fiscal Year 2024, we in DHS completed approximately 700,000 removals and returns, more than any Fiscal Year since 2010. That includes more removals to countries other than Mexico than in any prior Fiscal Year.

This is the result of a sustained effort by our Administration to exercise its full authorities to enforce the law, as we have continued to operate in what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system that Congress has failed to reform for decades.

Over the last four years, DHS has strengthened and enforced consequences for those who enter our country without a legal basis to remain; expanded our partnerships with countries across the region to better implement and enforce our strategy; delivered safe, orderly, and lawful pathways that continue to provide humanitarian relief under our laws, and consistent with our values; and, given our workforce the support they need and deserve to do their jobs - within the financial constraints that we operate currently and for the past four years.

This has changed the risk calculus for individuals willing to take the dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers.

Let me review the actions that we have taken.

We have enhanced the screening and vetting processes essential to protecting our nation's security and public safety, identifying and applying the most up-to-date information and intelligence. Specifically, we have, for example, expanded the number of countries that participate in biometric sharing and screening platforms from 11 to 21 countries; increased vetting for worldwide refugee processing, affirmative asylum processing, and non-immigrant visas worldwide; facilitated the use of vital, classified information in immigration enforcement and adjudicative hearings; increased our abilities to share important, sensitive, and classified information with Border Patrol Agents in the field, and Office of Field Operations personnel as well, enabling real-time vetting of certain nationals for the first time ever; and, increased capabilities to perform continuous vetting processes for non-citizens.

We have expedited the removal process for migrants without a legal basis to stay and provided asylum protection to those who meet the standards set by Congress. DHS has also reduced the time it takes to remove individuals with final orders of removal who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States by more than half from its historical average, and slashed the estimated number of gotaways by approximately 60 percent from Fiscal Year 2023 to Fiscal Year 2024.

We have worked closely with international partners throughout the hemisphere to stem extracontinental migration through increased use of transit visas and passenger vetting. Specifically, we have expanded the use of enforcement measures against the ruthless smugglers that profit off of irregular migration, including sanctions on transportation companies that facilitate irregular migration. We have mobilized actions from partner nations to expand lawful pathways, address the root causes of irregular migration, and reduce the flows of migrants through the Darién and Central America and Mexico.

We have listened to our workforce and invested significantly in helping them do their jobs, again within the financial constraints in which we operate. We secured the first significant increase of Border Patrol Agents in more than a decade - this with the help of Congress - increasing the number of Agents and Officers on the southwest border to over 24,000; also, adding thousands of additional support personnel, and surging thousands of law enforcement and other personnel from across the Department.

We made significant infrastructure and process improvements to enhance our ability to deploy consequences for unlawful entries at the border, including: deploying autonomous surveillance towers and new non-intrusive inspection systems at Ports of Entry; constructing new facilities that have increased our holding capacity by over a third since early 2021; digitizing processing systems; contracting support for transportation between sectors; and, establishing processes to ensure that removals are accomplished fairly, efficiently, and quickly - this also with our international partners.

We have built a model that works. We have shown that it is possible to dramatically decrease illegal immigration at our southern border, provide humanitarian relief for those who deserve it and need it, and limit the reach of human smuggling networks, all while upholding our core national values.

Our Administration's strategy has been tough, humane, legal, and effective. Today, the border is more secure, more safe, and more orderly than it was in the prior administration, and the progress we have made can be continued. Ultimately, however, the only enduring solution is for Congress to legislatively reform a system that is so fundamentally broken.