Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Newsmax on Tuesday that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is lying to Congress and Americans by saying the southern border is secure.
"Secretary Mayorkas continues to say that the border is secure, which is a big, fat lie," Biggs said on Newsmax's "National Report." "The second thing is that Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz is trying to put the best light on it, but he knows what's going on."
Ortiz posted on Twitter on Monday that Customs and Border Protection agents encountered 12,000 illegal migrants in the past 72 hours, arresting five gang members, five sex offenders, and a murderer.
According to Ortiz, two officers were assaulted, and the units confiscated two stolen vehicles and three firearms.
"We had a lot of significant arrests over the weekend," Ortiz said in the post. "Great job by our workforce!"
Biggs said that while the agency logged the encounters, he wondered how many "got-aways" crossed the border illegally and undetected.
"Those 12,000 apprehensions are encounters. Most of those are surrenders," Biggs said. "But what he's not telling you is how many thousands of people came into the country in that same 72-hour period between the ports of entry, wearing camouflage, bringing drugs, bringing terrorists, bringing other criminals, that we're not talking about.
"In other words, he's not telling you the numbers of got-aways, which is going to be somewhere probably in the neighborhood of 8,000 to 10,000 people in that same 72-hour period. That's what's going on in the border."
Meanwhile, Biggs said that this coming week's planned House Judiciary Committee "field trip" to interview witnesses in New York is only coincidental after the Manhattan arraignment of former President Donald Trump by District Attorney Alvin Bragg last week.
"The timing is that we've been planning a series of field hearings in major cities around the country where we've observed high crime rates, so this just happens to be one that falls, oddly enough, coincidental in my opinion to the Trump indictments," Biggs said.
"We've talked about New York; we talked about Chicago. There's San Francisco, there's Los Angeles, there's a lot of cities that are having trouble with high crime rates because district attorneys are engaged in what we would say is maybe some lenient prosecutorial policies."
Biggs said the committee wants to hear from victims of crime in New York and review statistics and other data, but will invite Bragg to appear.
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