Border chief seeks more backing on ‘front lines’

WASHINGTON — Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz testified Wednesday that illegal border crossings, which topped 2 million for the first time last year, have created a “crisis” that is straining the agency’s resources in some areas.

“The migration flow represents challenges and, in some areas, a crisis situation,” Ortiz said during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in Pharr.

But Ortiz would not pin the blame on policy changes under the Biden administration as Republicans on the committee pushed him to do so, pointing to global migration shifts driven by the COVID pandemic and economic strife.

Ortiz said prosecutions along the border are up 35 percent, and he stressed that the surge in migration has strained the agency’s resources.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is calling for more funding for Border Patrol as the GOP seeks wide-ranging government spending cuts.

“We need more officers on the front lines,” Ortiz said.

While Ortiz occasionally frustrated Republicans on the panel, who urged him to be more “candid” in his responses, his testimony nonetheless may have made the trip to the border worth it for the GOP, which is trying to build a case to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

At one point, Ortiz appeared to contradict Mayorkas, testifying that the department does not have operational control of some parts of the border.

Wednesday’s field hearing was the latest part of the impeachment effort, and it was boycotted by Democrats who slammed it as a partisan stunt.

“It has become clear that Republicans planned to politicize this event from the start,” said U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “Instead of a fact-finding mission to develop better border security and immigration policies, Republicans are traveling to the border to attack the administration and try to score political points with their extreme rhetoric — despite having voted against the resources border personnel need.”

The White House accused Republicans of seeking to slash funding for border security as they push spending cuts and said the hearing was nothing more than an effort to gin up political fodder against President Joe Biden, even as his plan to handle asylum-seekers led to a 40 percent drop in illegal border crossings in January. The administration Wednesday reported those figures held in February, with 212,266 arrests, compared to 208,511 the month before.

U.S. Rep. Mark Green, the Tennessee Republican who leads the committee, fumed at the Democratic boycott in his opening comments, saying the hearing was meant to “get members of Congress and their staff out of the cubicles back in Washington and down here to the border to see it for ourselves.”

“You cannot read about being a doctor and then go do brain surgery,” Green said. “It takes the leader getting on the ground, seeing what’s going on, to make well-informed decisions.”

Green also pushed back on the notion that “more money will fix this issue.”

“A lack of money didn’t cause this massive, sudden surge,” Green said.

The hearing comes as the Biden administration has shifted its border strategy as it prepares to end a public health order known as Title 42, which was put in place during the coronavirus pandemic and has been used to immediately expel most migrants.

Biden’s plan — which has been panned by immigrant advocates and restrictionists alike — would establish harsher penalties for migrants who cross the border without first scheduling an appointment at a port of entry to make a claim for asylum, and for those who have not already been denied asylum in another country.

The administration says the new plan will encourage migrants to use “lawful, safe and orderly pathways” into the United States and will cut out human smuggling networks that exploit migrants for financial gain. It is an expansion of a scheme the administration has in place for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela that led to a 40 percent drop in border crossings in January, including a 95 percent decline in encounters with migrants from those countries crossing the border illegally.