Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refused to answer GOP Seantors’ questions on Tuesday about the multitude of crises plaguing the nation under his leadership.
During a Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs hearing on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson asked Mayorkas how many people the Biden administration has “let into the country.”
Mayorkas tried dodging the question by blaming the “broken immigration system.”
“I wanted a number. How many people have you let in this country?” Johnson asked again.
When Mayorkas once again tried to sidestep the interrogation by couching it with excuses, Johnson cut him off.
“I’ll give you the number,” Johnson said. “It’s about 6 million. About 1.7 million known gotaways. We don’t know who these people are. We just know that they’ve come to this country, and they’re residing somewhere.”
The open border and the increased threat of terrorism that comes with it wasn’t the only topic Mayorkas showed a staunch unwillingness to answer questions about.
When Sen. Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas why Nejwa Ali, an openly antisemitic DHS employee who previously worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization, had yet to be fired for posting imagery supporting Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, Mayorkas did not give him a straight answer.
“Have you fired her?” Hawley asked. “Don’t come to this hearing room when Israel has been invaded, and Jewish students are barricaded in libraries in this country and cannot be escorted out because they are threatened for their lives. You have employees who are celebrating genocide, and you are saying it’s despicable for me to ask the question. Has she been fired?”
Mayorkas confirmed Ali was placed “on administrative leave” but stopped short of explaining the department’s decision.
Hawley asked multiple times why Ali was still not fired, but Mayorkas obfuscated by claiming, “I cannot speak to an ongoing personnel matter.”
“Your answer is you can’t speak to it? This isn’t sufficient to fire her?” Hawley pressed. “She’s still on your payroll as we sit here today.”
“That is not what I’m saying,” Mayorkas said.
Hawley asked if DHS knew whether Ali “admitted, contrary to law, individuals who should not be in this country or denied Jewish refugees, whose genocides she’s advocating for, asylum that they deserve.”
Mayorkas again refused to answer Hawley’s questions.
“You’re not going to tell us what this person has done?” Hawley asked. “Are you conducting a review of her cases at least?
Hawley noted that Mayorkas has no excuse for his silence on Ali since he received Hawley’s written concerns long before the hearing.
“You know all about it, and you come here unwilling to answer and suggest that it is wrong of me to ask you the question. Quite frankly, Mr. Secretary, I think that your performance is despicable. And I think the fact that you are not willing to provide answers to this committee is absolutely atrocious,” Hawley concluded.
Mayorkas claimed that the questioning was “disrespectful of me and my heritage” because his Mother survived the Holocaust.
“What I found despicable is the implication that this language, tremendously odious, actually, could be emblematic of the sentiments of the 260,000 men and women of the Department of Homeland Security,” Mayorkas said.
Yet he still refused to provide straight answers during a hearing hinged on bureaucrats giving the body that funds their department straight answers.
Hawley asked if he could respond to Mayorkas’ comments, but his request was denied by the Committee’s Democrat Chairman Gary Peters.
Mayorkas has faced several threats of impeachment from Republicans for his role in compromising U.S. national security and his willingness to lie to advance the Biden administration’s open border agenda but has successfully evaded accountability thus far.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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