Chip Roy goes off on Mayorkas after tense hearing, vows to 'grind' Congress to halt unless border is secured

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his claims that the Biden administration has operational control of the southern border, including on the deadly fentanyl that has come across.

Roy joined "Faulkner Focus" Thursday to discuss why Mayorkas should be removed from his position and how the administration is taking part in human trafficking. 

"This administration is now not just leaving us stranded. They're actually taking part in the human trafficking train, that ‘Sound of Freedom’ exposed for everybody to see in the movie. And they are now actually combating and fighting Governor Abbott for daring to try to do what they refused to do."

Mayorkas has become a lightning rod for the crisis, with Republicans blaming him for running "open border" policies they say sparked and then fueled the border crisis, which saw over 1.7 million migrant encounters in fiscal 2021 and over 2.4 million in fiscal 2022.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., accused Mayorkas of orchestrating an "amnesty dance" with the CBP One app, which allows migrants to come to the border and schedule appointments to be paroled into the U.S.

"You've taken this app, and you've digitized illegal immigration. And you've scaled it to the moon," Gaetz said. "This app that you've got everybody downloading is like the Disney Fast Pass into the country, never to be subject to actual removal, just removal proceedings as you call them."

Roy said, "Yesterday's hearing was designed to expose that this secretary, this president, are both violating their oath to the Constitution, ignoring the laws that they are supposed to faithfully uphold to defend America." 

Roy said Mayorkas and the Biden administration are ignoring the laws "knowingly."

"In the case of Alejandro Mayorkas, he lied to us under oath in the Judiciary Committee stating that he had operational control of the border, smirking when he said it. He said it over and over and over again," said Roy. 

"He had no response except to say, You didn't give me time. That wasn't true, as the record shows." 

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Roy elaborated, "It is time to remove Alejandro Mayorkas. But more than that, it's now time to not give a single dollar in the appropriations process or in a continuing resolution to the Department of Homeland Security until they pass H.R.2 to remove Mayorkas and pay back Texas for the $10 billion Texas has had to spend to do the job the feds won't do."

Roy also is calling on his Republican colleagues to stand up against Mayorkas and the border policies of the administration. 

"More Republicans have come to the understanding of the realization that he indeed has committed high crimes and misdemeanors," said Roy. 

However, the congressman elaborated that some members in his party are holding on to an "outdated perspective" and need to use the Constitution instead of "hiding behind it." 

"Every Republican should be on notice that they shouldn't hide behind the Constitution. They should actually enforce the Constitution in this case and use the tools the founders gave us," he said, citing James Madison's writings in Federalist No. 58.

"I'm going to throw every ounce of my being to stop any continuing resolution and ending any funding of the Department of Homeland Security. Our leadership, Republicans should be on notice. We're going to secure the border, or we're going to damn well grind this place to a halt until they do."

Mayorkas and the agency have pushed back consistently against Republicans' claims, arguing his agency is working in a broken system in need of reform by Congress while dealing with a hemisphere-wide crisis. The agency has pointed to a sharp drop in encounters after the end of the Title 42 public health order.

While encounters are still high, with over 144,000 in June, they were the lowest numbers since February 2021. It has led to claims by DHS that its post-Title 42 strategy is working. The strategy includes a historic expansion of the use of humanitarian parole to allow migrants in legally at ports of entry while limiting the ability of migrants who enter illegally to claim asylum.

"Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely even within our fundamentally broken immigration system is working," Mayorkas said. "Unlawful entries between ports of entry along the southwest border have consistently decreased by more than half compared to the peak before the end of Title 42.

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Fox News' Adam Shaw contributed to this report.