Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who seems perpetually surprised by reality, said yesterday that the “rate of illness” at the southern border is at 20%.
“What I didn’t expect,” Mayorkas told the virtual Immigration Law and Policy Conference Monday afternoon, “was the tragic rise of the delta variant.”
Last week, the Secretary told reporters the explosion of migrants at the Del Rio encampment had taken his agency by surprise. “The volume of people was rather sudden, rather dramatic,” he said.
Back in March, as the number of illegals crossing the border was shooting up in response to the Biden welcome mat, Mayorkas was denying there was any such thing as a “crisis.” No more than a “challenge,” really. And, besides, it was all Trump’s fault.
That “challenge” has now become an overwhelming one. When asked on Sunday about the number of Del Rio migrants released into America so far, he was noncommittal: “I think it’s about 10,000 or so, 12,000 . . . could even be higher.” Many believe it is a LOT higher.
When asked how many migrants have been released without being tested for COVID-19 infection, Mayorkas responded in a couple of different ways. “We did not test that population of individuals. We do not know, I do not know, I should say if I may be perfectly accurate, I do not know if anyone was sick with COVID.”
Yet a little later he insisted that the government was following strict COVID testing protocols. “We test, isolate, and quarantine unaccompanied children. We work with nonprofit organizations to test families,’ he said.
In other words, we do, but in this case we didn’t.
Overall, Secretary Mayorkas seems to still be channeling his March self, quibbling over whether the one and a half million migrants encountered this year constitute a “flood.”
“This is nothing new,” he told Fox News. “I wouldn’t call it a flood.”
Of course not. Just a little challenge. And it’s still you-know-who’s fault.
For more, see the Daily Mail.