CNN’s Poppy Harlow Pushes Mayorkas After He Touts Border Successes: ‘If That’s Not a Crisis, Secretary, What Is?’

CNN’s Poppy Harlow pushed Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for refusing to refer to the situation at the border as a “crisis.”

Harlow was joined by Rosa Flores, a correspondent who has been reporting directly from Texas cities like El Paso, highlighting the struggles of migrants stuck in border towns after crossing the border.

Flores noted the current struggles migrants face, especially from smugglers and others looking to take advantage of the record numbers of people crossing. Mayorkas declared some successes at the border including an “unprecedented” attack on smugglers.

“We have accomplished more than 7,000 arrests. We have dedicated really untold resources, personel, technology, investigative capabilities to break up these smuggling organizations, to disrupt them. You and I have both seen too much tragedy on the border. It’s precisely we’re trying build safe and lawful pathways,” the secretary said.

Harlow later asked Mayorkas if he would “qualify” the situation at the border as a “crisis.” He did not and instead called on Congress to act on immigration reform.

“We have seen the situation at the border managed in an orderly way, we have seen it in extraordinarily challenging circumstances as well,” Mayorkas said. “You can rest assured, Poppy, that we’re doing everything that we possibly can to build a system that provides humanitarian relief in a safe and orderly way while trying to persuade Congress to fix what is a broken system.”

Harlow pushed further, noting approximately 2.4 million migrants crossed last year. Mayorkas this time time referred to a “migrant challenge” instead of a “crisis.”

“I understand that, but just what you’re seeing the 20 times you’ve been there, the record number of migrants at the southern border and last year it was nearly 2.4 million,” Harlow said. “If that’s not a crisis, secretary, what is?”

“You know, Poppy, we have seen 2.4 million encounters at our southern border and it is reflective of the greatest level of displacement of people in the world since World War II,” he said. “It is reflective of a migration challenge that is gripping the entire hemisphere.”

Harlow moved on from the “crisis” talk, but pushed Mayorkas further on the administration’s handling of the border. She noted border officials have told Flores they feel “abandoned” by the current administration. Harlow asked why it took President Joe Biden two years to agree to a border visit despite numerous calls previously for him to visit.

“The president knows the border very well,” Mayorkas, who has visited the border more than a dozen times, said. “He has had his secretary of homeland security visit multiple times since the very initiation of the administration.”

Watch above via CNN

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