As the head of DHS,
Secretary Mayorkas has a lot on his plate.
He has to deal with immigration and the border,
but also his agency is responsible for helping businesses
protect themselves from being hacked.
We just had a major hack that shutdown a pipeline, for example.
He also is in charge of protecting airports,
being part of the counter-terrorism mission,
keeping bombs off planes.
And he also has to think about the emerging threat
of domestic violence extremism
in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol building.
So there's a lot of hot issues that are coming to his desk right now.
We asked him about the border
and how he is handling the situation there.
He went to the Rio Grande Valley and talked
about how the number of children that
had been in Border Patrol facilities
had decreased drastically from April.
First of all, the Border Patrol station is no place for a child.
So our immediate responsibility is get them out
of the Border Patrol station as quickly as possible
and into the shelter and care of
the Department of Health and Human Services.
We have dedicated more than 300 Asylum and Refugee officers
to assist in case management to contract the time
that a child is in HHS custody before
unification with the parent or legal guardian
here in the U.S.
We refuse to say that we will not reunite
all the families.
And we are committed to reuniting the families
as fast as we can.
We recognize, number one, that we're dealing
with records that we are only now bringing
some level of completeness and order to.
They were in complete shambles.
We're dealing with such intangibles such as
individuals' reluctance to come forward to be reunited.
We have trust deficits to overcome by reason
of the cruelty of the past.
And quite frankly, some people are hard to find.
[Bennett]: What do you say to parents considering sending
their children across the border right now?
[Mayorkas]: Don't do it.
[Bennett]: Why not?
[Mayorkas]: The border is not open.
The danger of the journey is so extraordinarily acute,
and we are building alternatives,
legal pathways to assess the eligibility of individuals
to actually receive relief under U.S. law.
And don't risk your children's lives, which
and they are at risk in the hands of smugglers.
Don't do it.
[Bennett]: Secretary Mayorkas is the first immigrant,
who was born overseas, came to the U.S. as a child,
to take on the role of leading this department.
He was born in Cuba, came with his family
after the rise of Fidel Castro's communism government
and he brings a different perspective to the job,
a different perspective to the department
because of that family background that he has.
My first interview as a government--federal government
employee in the Obama administration,
the reporter, the first question I got was,
'so you used to be Cuban,'
and then she asked me a question, which I didn't even hear
because I was stuck on the preamble.
Am I no longer Cuban? Do we lose our past
based on where we are now?
[Abramson]: What did you say?
[Mayorkas]: I said, I said that's just a no.
I haven't lost that. I'm a Cuban-American.
I'm a United States citizen,
I'm not a citizen of Cuba but I haven't lost my heritage.
I think my family's experience and my own
influences my judgement, influences my perspective
on the world, on life, and on addressing the needs
of the American public, and the needs of the migrants,
and the decisions we make.
It's who I am.
[Bennett]: Some are calling
for you to ignore criminal histories
in making deportation decisions, you know,
given the pattern of racially biased policing
in some cities in the country.
Will you consider ignoring criminal convictions
in deportation decisions?
[Mayorkas]: Brian, when you ask that question do you mean
ignoring them entirely?
Or factoring them into the decision in the
exercise of discretion? I would, you can see
by my response, which I put in question mark,
in question form, my answer, which is no
we will not ignore criminal history but we will
evaluate criminal history in determining whether
an individual poses a public safety threat.
I don't expect there to be unanimity of view
with respect to the guidelines that I ultimately promulgate.
[Abrams]: Do you believe that Russia was involved at all
in the attack on the pipeline?
[Mayorkas]: There's no evidence
to suggest that it was at this point.
The evidence suggests that it was criminal conduct.
[Bennett]: Do you feel like you have a handle
on internal threats
inside the department when it comes to violent extremists?
[Mayorkas]: So that
presupposes the existence of violent extremists
within the department as distinguished from ideologies
that I might find offensive but that individuals are
of course free to hold.
Our obligation and my obligation as the leader of this department
is to ensure that we do not have violent extremists within
our ranks because that speaks of a connection between
an ideology and the violence that it might breed.
That's our responsibility and that's why I directed
the internal review that I did.
[Bennett]: DHS deployed federal agents to quell protests during civic
unrest last summer. Do you think that was an appropriate
use of agency resources?
[Mayorkas]: I think that agency resources
can be deployed according to authorities
of delegation to assist the federal protective service
in protecting federal property and people on federal property.
I think that is appropriate.
Whether they have the appropriate training, the appropriate equipment,
whether they employ the appropriate tactics in addressing
that responsibility is a separate question.
And quite frankly, we are reviewing and revising substantially
the training protocols, the equipment protocols, and the tactics.
[Bennett]: Do you think
the way that DHS officials acted in the Portland protests
last summer hurt the reputation of the department?
[Mayorkas]: Yes.
[Abrams]: What are you doing to restore
trust in the department,
as a result of that specific incident?
[Mayorkas]: Yeah, because I
was about to say the work that I am doing
every gosh darn single, single day.
I work really, really hard.
Really, really. Well--
How does one not work incredible hard
in this job?
Or as an Assistant U.S. Attorney?
How does one not work this hard?
I mean, just from the point of view of responsibility
as well as opportunity,
to execute responsibility really, really well.
Justice is a very individualized determination.
And ultimately
it rests
or depends upon the hands in whom it rests.