Source: United States Senator for West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito
To view Senator Capito’s questions, click here or on the image above.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, questioned U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about President Biden’s DHS budget request, which cuts funding for the agency that oversees border security.
During the hearing, Senator Capito pressed Secretary Mayorkas on low morale and shortages among border patrol staff, as well as ways to more efficiently and effectively detect dangerous drugs like fentanyl and xylazine at America’s southern border.
HIGHLIGHTS:
ON THE STATUS OF THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “I was just in Mexico with a group that went to Mexico about 10 days ago. You and I have talked through these years as I was ranking member and chair on this subcommittee, the situation, honestly hasn’t improved, I don’t think at all, in our southern border, their northern border. They’re pretty much overwhelmed and in a lot of cases, but I do believe the partnerships that we have with that country are extremely important if we’re going to solve this migration issue.”
ON INCREASING VOLUMES OF DANGEROUS DRUGS CROSSING THE BORDER: “Well, I mean, the amount [of drugs] that is being seized from year to year goes up. So that’s good. We’re seizing more, but it tells me there’s more coming through, we know it’s getting through. And I partially attribute it to the fact that our border patrol on our agents and officers are so overwhelmed with trying to figure out this human trafficking that’s coming through the southern border and then numbers that we’ve never seen before, that you only have so many and you only have so much. And I’m afraid we’re missing much, much more than we’re actually seizing, which I believe that to be true, and I think it’s part of the issue, is just this the whole situation on the whole. So I’ll leave that my belief on the on the table there.”
ON BORDER PATROL STAFFING: “I understand [the president’s] budget asks for a few more, not a whole lot more [Border Patrol Agents]. Are we at the levels of full employment with our agents? Are we still having to do special incentives so that people can stay longer after retirement or they get a bonus pay or something like that? I mean, I think it’s reflective the morale which I understand is, is very low. So what is the situation with the numbers and just because we would appropriate to more numbers, can we actually get there? … What I’m trying to get at is you can hire 300 new [agents], [but] are you down 500 or 1000?”
ON BORDER PATROL BEING STRETCHED TOO THIN: “Well I think part of the issues have been that we’ve been asking these agents to do so many different things that really are not in their core missions. And so because of so many people [crossing illegally] and we saw that when we went down there, you and I traveled together. And, you know, partially there’s some National Guard people that come down, some NGOs that help, but essentially, our border agents are asked to do so much in very, very difficult situations.”
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