Mayorkas Brags About Fighting The Term ‘Illegal Alien’ During Conversation About Migrants Exploiting Border Crisis

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas bragged Thursday about his efforts to stop his agency from using the term “illegal alien,” during a conversation about migrants exploiting the crisis at the southern border.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked Mayorkas to answer to whether the asylum system is broken, emphasizing that economic migrants who do not qualify for the process are crossing the southern border, during a conversation at the Aspen Institute Security Forum. Mayorkas, however, suggested that the record numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are not necessarily “gaming the system,” and that he’s focused on treating them with “dignity.”

“You know when we speak of gaming the system, I just want everyone to understand the profile of the individuals whom we are encountering, and the president spoke of the dignity of every individual. I issued a memo very early on that we would not use the term illegal alien. When speaking of these individuals, we use the term ‘noncitizen,’ and that speaks to the importance of respecting the dignity of the individual,” Mayorkas said.

Federal authorities recorded more than 2.3 million encounters in fiscal year 2022 and already more than 1.7 million so far in fiscal year 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“An individual who’s a parent, whose daughter cannot walk safely to school and who is so desperate for a better life for that daughter, who allows that daughter to flee on her own in the hands of others to traverse another country only to reach the dangers of the southern border, that speaks to the level of desperation. That daughter may not be fleeing persecution by reason of her membership in a particular social group, but at the same time, she’s not gaming the system,” Mayorkas said.