WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, the House Committee on Homeland Security majority, led by Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN), released its interim report on the third phase of the Committee’s comprehensive oversight investigation into the crisis at the Southwest border and how the policies and actions of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have precipitated the worst border crisis in American history.

Read the full interim report here. 

“This self-inflicted crisis has exacted a terrible human cost all across our country,”Chairman Green said. “Since Secretary Mayorkas took office, we’ve watched in horror as fentanyl has increasingly spread into our communities, criminal illegal aliens have poured across the border, and law enforcement has been completely overwhelmed. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of vulnerable people, including children, have been trafficked or smuggled across the border by the cartels into forced labor, the sex trade, and other horrific situations. Secretary Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty is central to these horrors, and instead of changing course on the policies that brought us here, he has only doubled down in their defense. It’s unacceptable, and we’re going to keep informing the public about what this crisis has cost all of us.”

This report documents the various and staggering human costs of the unprecedented border crisis:

• The fentanyl crisis raging in American communities, with more than 150,000 Americans dying from synthetic opioid poisonings in the last two years—primarily fentanyl;  
• The flood of illegal aliens and the inability to enforce the law destroying the morale of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel and other law enforcement officers, and putting numerous others in unnecessary danger; 
• The rising number of criminal illegal aliens crossing the border, and the various crimes committed by illegal aliens in American communities on Mayorkas’ watch; 
• The shocking number of migrants found dead on American soil under the Biden administration’s policies, and how the historic number of vulnerable individuals flooding through Central America and Mexico to the Southwest border face horrific abuse and trauma; 
• The unchecked exploitation and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) flooding across the border, and the Biden administration’s refusal to either return these children to their families or even provide accountability for their whereabouts; and
• The public health impacts of releasing illegal aliens into the country during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite stringent protocols in place for Americans and lawful travelers. 

In the report, the Committee states, “The last several years of Mayorkas’ leadership have proven what those who believe in the rule of law and secure borders have known all along—open borders are a humanitarian, public safety, and public health disaster. Mayorkas’ embrace of open-borders policies has not only enriched the cartels that increasingly control the Southwest border…but have come at the cost of human lives and livelihoods, those of American citizens and migrants alike.” 

To gather more information about the impacts of Mayorkas’ open-borders policies on Americans across the country, the Committee held a full-committee hearing in September 2023, during which Members heard from witnesses about how those policies are helping facilitate mass child trafficking, overwhelming Border Patrol agents and their families, and separating parents from their children due to fentanyl poisoning—even as far away as Alaska. 

In July 2023, the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, led by Chairman Clay Higgins (R-LA), held a hearing featuring a Texas woman who lost her mother and 7-year-old daughter to a driver smuggling illegal aliens, a rancher whose property has been overwhelmed by the flood of illegal immigration, and a veteran of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) testifying about illegal alien crime in the United States.

Read the Committee’s interim report on the first phase of the investigation, covering Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty, here. The Committee’s second interim report on unprecedented cartel control of the Southwest border, can be read here.

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