Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, in an interview aired Wednesday, is warning that the enormous migrant numbers being encountered at the southern border are “straining our system” as he again echoed administration calls for Congress to pass a sweeping immigration bill that includes an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
Mayorkas was asked in an interview with The Washington Post whether the administration can handle an expected additional surge in migration across the southern border once the Title 42 public health order — which has been used to quickly expel migrants at the border since 2020 — comes to an end.
Mayorkas, in his answer, said that the number of migrants that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is already encountering is putting significant pressure on the U.S. immigration system.
“There’s no question that the number of encounters that we are experiencing at the border is straining our system,” he said, before calling the immigration system “fundamentally broken.”
“No one disagrees with that. We just can’t seem to agree upon the solution. And a solution is long, long overdue,” he said. “Within the broken immigration system that we are operating we are managing the number of encounters, and we are prepared to address the end of Title 42. We’ve been preparing for this since well beyond last year.”
Migrant numbers have spiked dramatically under Mayorkas and the Biden administration. FY 2021 saw a historic 1.7 million migrant encounters, which was then surpassed in FY2022 when numbers hit 2.3 million.  So far, FY 2023, which began in October, is on track to surpass FY 2022’s numbers.
The situation has been complicated by the looming end of Title 42. The Biden administration attempted to end the order in May last year, but was blocked by a Republican legal challenge.
However, in November, a federal judge found the use of the order, which was implemented during the Trump administration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, unlawful and ordered it to be unwound on Dec. 21.

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