WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) subpoenaed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for information on national security threats at America’s borders. The subpoena comes after more than a year of the department’s stonewalling and failure to satisfy the Committee’s document and information requests related to the record number of inadmissible aliens on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS) who are crossing the Southwest border between ports of entry.

“President Biden and his now-impeached DHS secretary’s refusal to secure our borders or comply with our laws is putting our country in rapidly growing peril,” Chairman Green said. “The Biden administration has utterly failed to safeguard the American people by allowing millions of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the country with limited screening and vetting, including tens of thousands of special interest aliens. 
 
“Amid the chaos, Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden have also allowed nearly two million gotaways to evade an overwhelmed Border Patrol and roam free in American communities, presenting an almost impossible challenge for the dedicated federal law enforcement who are working tirelessly to find a growing number of needles in an ever-expanding haystack. Our enemies know this, and they are taking advantage. Secretary Mayorkas has continued to stonewall congressional oversight and clearly will not comply unless compelled to do so––because he knows this information places the blame squarely at his and President Biden’s feet.” 
 
On May 19, 2023, Chairman Green, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent an initial letter requesting documents and information, which referenced the 96 inadmissible aliens on the terrorist watchlist who had crossed the Southwest border to that point in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. Since the start of FY2021, the Border Patrol has encountered more than 370 of these individuals. 
 
On September 29, 2023, the Chairmen threatened to subpoena Secretary Mayorkas for the information, writing, “Instead of producing the requested information, ‘[t]he Department ignored these inquiries or responded with vague, unhelpful excuses—citing, among other things, ‘interagency equities’ and the ‘sensitive’ nature of the information.”

Read more in NBC News.

In a cover letter, Chairman Green said, “For more than a year, the Committee made multiple attempts to obtain the requested documents and information without compulsory process. On May 19, 2023, Chairman Jordan, Chairman Comer, and I sent you a letter requesting specific documents and information relating to gotaways and illegal aliens on the terrorist screening database encountered at the Southwest border since January 2021. On September 11, 2023, the Department’s response directed the three committees to publicly available information and offered a classified briefing, but failed to provide any of the requested documents. On September 29, 2023, Chairman Jordan, Chairman Comer, and I sent you a follow up letter reiterating our requests from the May 19, 2023 letter and expressing that a briefing, while helpful, would be an insufficient substitute for the documents and information sought.”
 
Chairman Green continued, “Even while purporting to provide access, the Department’s tactics to reduce transparency were evident. For example, citing space limitations, the Department limited attendance to the November 1, 2023 in-camera review session to only six staff members. The SCIF used at the first review, however, had 27 total seats, most of which sat empty. The Department further limited review to only staff holding a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance even though the Forms I-213 provided for review were unclassified and marked Law Enforcement Sensitive/For Official Use Only (LES/FOUO). Most critically, the Department only provided a small sub-set of the Forms I-213 requested, and it refused to provide print versions of them, opting instead to project pages on electronic monitors, making review and analysis of the documents nearly impossible.”
 
Chairman Green concluded, “Despite over a year of follow ups and accommodating the Department’s protracted schedules and insufficient attempts to respond to some of the requests in the May 19, 2023 letter, the Committee’s requests largely remain unsatisfied and are 409 days delinquent with no definitive timeline for production. The Department’s demonstrated approach to indefinitely protract production necessitates issuance of the enclosed subpoena.
 
“The Committee requires the documents and information compelled by the attached subpoena to fully evaluate potential legislation to reform the Department’s handling of its encounters with aliens on the TSDB at the Southwest border and the potential security vulnerability those encounters pose to homeland security. The in-camera reviews provided have been insufficient for the Committee to fully analyze and evaluate the Department’s operations and decisions. Thus far, the Department has rendered it impossible for the Committee to understand the complete case status for even one relevant alien. The Department’s functions relating to the border and security are directly within the purview of the Committee’s oversight authorities.”
 
Read the full cover letter, the schedule, and the subpoena.
 
Background: 

The Biden administration’s open-borders policies represent an unprecedented threat to America’s national security. Over 370 individuals on the terrorist watchlist have been apprehended attempting to illegally cross our Southwest border between ports of entry since the beginning of FY2021—an increase of more than 3,000 percent compared to all of FY2017-2020. Individuals from more than 160 countries have been apprehended crossing the border illegally, including aliens from countries on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The Committee has documented how DHS’ processes for screening and vetting of inadmissible border crossers are wholly inadequate.  

Homeland Republicans continue to conduct rigorous oversight:

• Today’s subpoena follows a shocking report by NBC News that more than 400 inadmissible aliens “have come to the U.S. from Central Asia and elsewhere as ‘subjects of concern’ because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.” According to the report, roughly 150 of these individuals have since been arrested after entering the country, but 50 remain unaccounted for. 
• This month, Chairman Green sent Secretary Mayorkas and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray a letter demanding documents and a briefing pertaining to several individuals with connections to ISIS who were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia this month. All of these individuals reportedly entered the United States through the Southwest border, but Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) limited ability to fully vet and screen those crossing led to all of them being released into the United States. Reportedly, at least one even made use of the unlawful CBP One mass-parole program. 
• In May 2024, Chairman Green, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC),Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence Chairman August Pfluger (R-TX), and Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins (R-LA) sent a letter to Secretary Mayorkas, Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Lloyd Austin, and FBI Director Wray, requesting information on an attempted breach of Marine Corps Base Quantico. The attempted breach was reportedly conducted by two Jordanian nationals alleged to be in the United States unlawfully. 
• In April 2024, Chairmen Green,  Pfluger, and  Higgins sent a letter to Secretary Mayorkas requesting information and documents from CBP pertaining to the processing and detention procedures for inadmissible aliens on the terrorist watchlist, also known as the Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS). In January 2024, ICE arrested an illegal alien in Minnesota who belonged to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, who had lived freely in the United States for a year after being released.
• In September 2023, Chairmen Green, Bishop, Higgins, and Pfluger demanded answers from DHS and the FBI following reports that Uzbek nationals were smuggled to the Southwest border by an individual with ties to ISIS. 
• Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens testified to the Committee during a May 2023 transcribed interview that he was “absolutely” concerned that the high flow of illegal aliens through the Del Rio Sector was impeding agents’ ability to reduce the number of gotaways. The Committee is concerned this could allow suspected terrorists the opportunity to cross our borders undetected.