Medicaid emergency spending for illegal immigrants more than doubled from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, according to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green.
During a congressional hearing Wednesday on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ job performance, Green said more people have entered the U.S. illegally under his roughly two-year tenure "than in the 12 years of the Obama and Trump administrations combined."
He repeated the largely well-known fact that most migrants coming to the southern U.S. border are there because of hard-to-fix economic problems in their countries, but argued that “they’re coming in record numbers because Mayorkas has left the doors of our country unlocked and wide open."
"These individuals typically possess no legitimate claim to asylum and under prior administrations – both Democrat and Republican – most would have been quickly deported. The difference now? Mayorkas and his policies," he also said at the hearing, titled “Open Borders, Closed Case: Secretary Mayorkas’ Dereliction of Duty on the Border Crisis.”
The Tennessee Republican said that Medicaid spending on emergency medical services for illegal immigrants went from roughly $3 billion in fiscal year 2020 to over $7 billion in fiscal year 2021.
Green's office did not respond to a request by the time this story was published for the Medicaid spending amount in fiscal year 2022.
Green also said Wednesday that Mayorkas has "surrendered control" of the southwest border to the Mexican drug cartels.
"Today, nothing comes in or out without the cartels’ knowledge and tacit approval," he said. "They have seized full control, pushing not just historic numbers of illegal aliens across, but record amounts of drugs like fentanyl, which killed more than 71,000 Americans in 2021 – a horrific new record."
He said fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans age 18-49 and that a recent study shows four times more Americans under 20 died from fentanyl poisonings in 2021 compared to 2018.
Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee's top Democrat, argued that calls for Mayorkas and other top officials in the Biden administration, including President Biden, to be removed from office "is about House Republican leadership catering to its most extreme MAGA members, who want to impeach someone – anyone at all."
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