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Press Release Published: Apr 27, 2022

Comer, Oversight Republicans: The Biden Administration is Intentionally Sabotaging MPP

Despite a court order to reimplement the program, DHS’s arbitrary requirements render it useless

WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) and several Oversight Committee Republican lawmakers who recently traveled to the southern border raised concerns in a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Biden Administration is actively working to sabotage the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) to allow for the release of illegal border crossers in the United States. A federal court ordered the Biden Administration to work in good faith to reimplement MPP, but multiple Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials told the Republican lawmakers the program is now restricted to arbitrary daily enrollment limits and is subject to massive bureaucratic paperwork requirements that make the program unworkable. 

“The Biden Administration has repeatedly tried to end MPP as it continues to roll back policies designed to ensure border security and disincentivize illegal crossings. Despite being ordered by a federal court to work in good faith to reimplement MPP, we learned on a recent trip to the southern border that Border Patrol agents across multiple sectors call into question DHS’s commitment to full reimplementation. This raises questions about whether the Biden Administration’s DHS political appointees and the White House are actively working to sabotage MPP to facilitate the release of even more illegal border crossers into the U.S.,” wrote the Republican lawmakers.

Republican Members of the Oversight Committee recently toured border facilities and spoke with officials in the San Diego, El Centro, and Yuma sectors. Multiple CBP officials told Members the new requirements imposed on MPP by the Biden Administration rendered it useless in their sector. Despite historic levels of illegal crossings in recent months, there have been very few enrollments in MPP. In February, there were only 489 MPP enrollments across the entire southwest border, despite there being over 158,000 illegal crossings.

“One high-level CBP official told us they are limited to an arbitrary 10 enrollments in MPP per day in one sector, and the additional bureaucratic requirements increased the average enrollment processing time from 1.5 hours to over 8 hours per migrant. Because the U.S. Border Patrol agents and facilities are so overwhelmed with the historic numbers of illegal border crossings, it is much faster to simply process those migrants for release into the interior of the U.S. Agents speculate that release into the interior is the actual intent of Biden Administration officials, not a defect of the process. If true, these reports reveal gross mismanagement and intentional thwarting of our system of law and order by political appointees in the Biden Administration,” continued the Republican lawmakers.

The letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas can be found here.