Mayorkas, Becerra to brief House lawmakers on migrant crisis

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will brief House lawmakers about the ongoing crisis at the southern border Wednesday.

The virtual hourlong meeting is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. EST, with both cabinet secretaries briefing members via teleconference from the White House.

Other members of the administration may also attend and offer updates at the briefing, though those attending will not include Vice President Harris, who was tasked by President Biden with overseeing the diplomatic efforts to quell the migrant surge.

Originally, Biden said he was placing his VP in charge of responding to the crisis, though the White House walked that back Monday, instead saying that she would merely address its “root causes.”

“The vice president of the United States will be helping lead that effort, specifically the root causes — not the border, there’s some confusion over that,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at her daily press briefing Monday.

The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on the meeting.

The briefing will take place less than one week after Mayorkas delivered a similar briefing to senators alongside other top administration officials.

Those who joined Mayorkas included Amy Pope, senior advisor for migration at the Domestic Policy Council, Dan Smith, acting assistant Secretary of State, and Federal Emergency Management Agency acting administrator Bob Fenton.

That briefing came one day after Mayorkas and Becerra briefed Biden and Harris directly on the crisis, shortly before the president presented his running mate as the one taking the reins.

The Biden administration’s undoing of former President Donald Trump’s border policies has prompted a flood of Central American and Mexican illegal migrants at the US border, including thousands of unescorted children.

Central Americans looking for refuge from the Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — have taken these policy moves, as well as the overwhelmingly more welcoming tone from Democrats, as a sign that this president is inviting them to cross the border.

Insisting that the border was not facing a crisis, Mayorkas said earlier this month that the problems the agency faced should be blamed on the previous administration.

The data, however, overwhelmingly shows that migrants were flooding the border because they believed Biden would welcome them with open arms.

Last week, members of the Mexican government met with White House southwest border coordinator Roberta Jacobson, alongside Juan Gonzalez, National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere, and Ricardo Zuniga, the State Department’s newly appointed Northern Triangle special envoy.

The group would “engage with Mexican government officials to develop an effective and humane plan of action to manage migration,” the administration said.

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