The trip was Johnson's third to the border, his first as Speaker of the House and this time to lead the largest congressional delegation to make the trip. Sixty-four House Republicans representing 26 states and one U.S. territory joined him at Eagle Pass, Texas, which was remarkably quiet compared to images that have flooded media outlets for months.
Government data shows that more than 2 million illegal immigrants crossed the border in 2023, marking a second-straight year to hit that number. According to testimony by Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas, there have been more than 7 million illegal encounters at the border since Joe Biden entered the White House in January of 2021.
Johnson suggests Mayorkas is either lying or is in denial.
"We know the number is twice that high of those who have actually come through," Johnson said on Washington Watch Thursday. "There have been 1.7 million known 'got-aways' who have evaded capture and entered the country. The number is actually countless because the border is not even being monitored in most places right now."
Johnson told show host Tony Perkins that some men from adversarial nations are crossing the border in full military fatigues.
As the Republican delegation stood at the border Wednesday, the flow continued with some illegals taunting lawmakers as they walked across shouting their countries of origin.
"Venezuela, China and wherever else they're coming from, 170 countries around the globe because the Biden administration has laid out the welcome mat and sent the message loud and clear to everyone everywhere to come on in. There is no border; we don't have one," Johnson said.
Mayorkas: We're enforcing laws
Mayorkas told CBS News Thursday that the U.S. is enforcing its laws. "Everyone agrees that the system is broken, and what we are doing is enforcing our laws. We are enforcing our laws, the criminal laws, our immigration laws, and that includes our asylum laws," he said.
Rep. Robert Aderholt disagrees with the DHS head.
"I understand that people want to come here to the United States of America, but we're in a situation right now where we have to make sure that the people who are coming here are coming for the right reasons. When they come here illegally, when they come here through the back door, so to speak, you don't know why they're coming," Aderholt said on Washington Watch this week. "In order to keep the front door open, you have to shut the back door."
Republicans are demanding border reform in on-going budget talks. But the White House has sought to flip the script on the GOP by distorting that the party's latest effort at reform includes cutting Border Patrol agents. Johnson calls it more "madness" from the White House.
"They will take an objective fact and turn it on its head. What the president is proposing is … millions and millions and millions of additional dollars, billions if he can get them, to process more illegals. They don't want the border to be patrolled. They don't want to stem the flow of illegals into our country. They want to send more of them and distribute them around the nation. That's what his proposal is for. We're not going to do that," he said.
The House Homeland Security Committee has set a Jan. 10 hearing to discuss impeachment of Mayorkas.
Impeachment … who, me?
Mayorkas sidestepped the impeachment question in a Fox News interview Thursday.
"I lead 260 [thousand] incredibly dedicated and talented men and women at the Department of Homeland Security. I will continue to lead them in advancing the mission of protecting the American people …. We do so much for the American people, and I'm incredibly proud to do it," the secretary replied.
Speaker Johnson told Perkins yesterday that the open border not only clears the path for enemies of America, it strengthens the Mexican drug cartels who are making "billions" of dollars.
"[Border officials] told us on the border in the Del Rio sector alone yesterday [that] they think the cartels are making $32 million a week on human trafficking, trafficking people into our country. Do the math. That's $1.6 billion annually from just one sector of the border to violent criminal cartels. It is unconscionable that the White House would go along with this, but they are empowering it with their policies."
Johnson said a Mayorkas impeachment is overdue but stopped short of promising one.
"We haven't impeached a Cabinet secretary since the late 1800s, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I have been convinced that Mayorkas was committing impeachable offenses for a long, long time. He appeared a couple of times before my committee at the House Judiciary and just raised his hand, took the oath, and told us things that he knew when he was saying them were not true."
If the aim of an open border is to someday enroll voters who may lean Democrat, the administration has hit the mark with at least one border-crosser. One man of African descent who entered America at Lukeville, Arizona, in December told Fox News, "I love you, Joe Biden! Thank you for everything, Joe Biden!"
Everything is a lot. Johnson said Border Patrol agents have been transformed into processing agents, and Biden's processing centers are costing taxpayers $1 million a day – and that doesn't include the salaries of the agents.
"They have engineered this chaos. These are deliberate policy choices that have created this catastrophe," Johnson said.
Come on over and take part in Migrant Games
Processing is just the tip of the iceberg. "We're spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on the healthcare and the education and the housing and the recreation of people who are just flowing into our country illegally," Johnson said.
New York, Denver, Washington, DC, El Paso (Texas) and other cities have given up recreation centers to house migrants. These services aren't the most chilling expenses from the border surge.
"That's not to mention all the human trafficking that's involved, all the fentanyl that's poisoning our streets of every city in America and all the other societal ills that fall from it," Johnson said. "It's got to stop."
Joe's to blame
In his attempt to deal with the invasion of illegal aliens into his state, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has come under a lot of fire from Democratic leaders for busing illegal aliens to places like New York and Chicago. Abbott recently ordered migrants dropped off at the Secaucus, New Jersey, train station to avoid violating an edict from New York Mayor Eric Adams.
During a recent interview on Fox News, Abbott said it is clear Democrats have a very real hostility against illegal aliens.
"They profess to be sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. They want to welcome them in – until they actually do come in," the governor said. "And then when they come in, they say No, no, no, no, no. We don't want them here. We want to send them back to Texas.
"They're for illegal immigration – as long as it's Texas and the border states that have to deal with that illegal immigration."
Abbott says it's absurd to think that neither New York nor New Jersey has the room for this massive influx of illegals.
"They think Eagle Pass or Del Rio, TX has the room for it?" Abbott asks. "We have more people coming across our border every single day than what New York gets in a week or a month! It's outrageous that they're saying that they cannot deal with this."
The governor argues this would not be happening if Joe Biden hadn't eliminated all of Trump's border policies that led to the lowest level of border crossings in 40 years.
"The Remain in Mexico policy, the Title 42 policy, the end of Catch and Release, and building a border wall. If the Biden administration was enforcing the immigration laws passed by Congress, the mayor of New York and the leaders of New Jersey and Chicago, etcetera would not be having these problems."
