(NewsNation) — A Republican congressman said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has lost control of the situation at the U.S. border.
U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, R-Ohio, said it’s good that Mayorkas is visiting the border to see the situation on the ground. But he said the Biden administration’s response to the border isn’t working, especially plans to send air marshals to assist.
“We’ve got 2.9 million people who travel every single day in this country, and to say that you’ve got 1,800 (air marshals), whether it’s 3,000 or 1,800, whatever the number is, I mean, that is a very small number,” Carey said, explaining why he thinks air marshals shouldn’t be reassigned to border work.
Carey said the solution is to change immigration policies and allow agents who already work on the border to do the job they are meant to do.
“The one thing that when I talk to border security agents, and I’ve been to the border, when I talked to him, they’re very clear. I mean, every single person that comes across the border right now has been touched by the cartels in one way, shape, or form or the other,” Carey said.
Carey admitted there may not be much room for Congress to reform policy until the new session is seated in January, when Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives.
Republican suggestions on how to resolve the issue have included launching investigations and even possibly impeaching Mayorkas as well as resuming plans to build a border wall.
The bottom line, Carey said, is that more needs to be done to secure the border and throttle the amount of money that flows into cartels that smuggle drugs and people across.
“The cartels are making billions of dollars doing human trafficking. So we’ve got a real problem,” Carey said.