Chris Lange, FISM News

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House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) announced late Monday that every single Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee had abruptly pulled out of a scheduled field hearing on the border crisis.

Green told Fox News that he was not provided with any explanation for the sudden bailout, despite the fact that Democrats had previously scheduled their own witnesses to appear at Wednesday’s hearing in McAllen, Texas. 

“It’s deeply disappointing that the minority members of the Committee have chosen to bail on this week’s full committee field hearing in Texas, only after they invited and confirmed a minority witness for one of the panels,” Green said, noting that Republicans intend to proceed with the hearing, as planned. 

“The only message their absence sends is that they are uninterested in coming to the table to have a conversation about the devastation that this border crisis is having on Americans and their communities across the country,” Green added.

All Democrats on the House Homeland Security committee are boycotting Wednesday’s field hearing on the border crisis here in the RGV. They will be missing out on testimony from United States Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, @USBPChief, who is set to testify as a federal witness.

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) March 13, 2023

Fox reporter Bill Melugin said in a tweet that Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) cited Republicans’ alleged politicization of the event as the reason Democrats elected to boycott the hearing.

“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,” Thompson asserted. The Mississippi lawmaker added that Democrats on the Committee have maintained “regular contact with Department leadership and stakeholders on the ground and will be taking substantive site visits to the border – including as soon as this week.”

EXPERTS SPEAK

Wednesday’s hearing, titled: “Failure by Design: Examining Secretary Mayorkas’ failure to enforce the laws of our country,” will include testimony from U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz; Steven Cagan, Assistant Director of The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Countering Transnational Organized Crime Homeland Security Investigations; Col. Steven McGraw, Director of the Texas Dept. of Public Safety; Kinney County, Texas Sheriff Brad Coe; and Chris Cabrera, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council.

Green previously announced that witnesses will offer “expert testimony outlining how the crisis at the Southwest border is a direct result of Secretary Mayorkas’ failure to enforce the laws of our country.” House Republicans in January filed articles of impeachment against Mayorkas on charges that he “willfully abdicated his duties as Secretary of Homeland Security and actively misled Congress and the American people” when he testified that the border was secure.

With their newfound House majority, Republicans have launched a series of investigations into the Biden administration’s border policies, which many claim has resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis in modern U.S. history. 

FISM reported in February that migrant encounters in Fiscal Year 2023 were already well outpacing numbers from the prior two years. Customs and Border Patrol data showed 1,072,400 total nationwide encounters between October 2022 and January 2023 alone. More than 1.7 million migrant encounters were reported in FY2021. The number soared to more than 2.3 million in FY2022. 

In addition to the millions of illegal migrants who have flooded into the nation’s interior under Mayorkas’s watch, including hundreds listed on the terror suspect watch list, drug cartels are profiting hand over fist from the exploitation of migrant women and children and the deaths of Americans through sophisticated human and drug-smuggling operations.

The New York Times reported that between 2018 and 2022, Mexican drug cartels went from making $500 million a year from human smuggling operations to $13 billion, a 2,500% increase.

This article was partially informed by a Daily Wire report.