President Donald Trump is urging the Department of Justice to consider prosecuting former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of deliberately undermining national security by enabling illegal immigration.
Trump made the explosive remarks Tuesday following a visit to a newly constructed high-security migrant detention center deep in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” When a supporter asked why no officials from the Biden-era DHS had faced arrest, Trump didn’t hold back.
“Why hasn’t he been arrested yet?” a reporter asked. “Obviously you guys are cleaning up the mess that was made deliberately for the past four years… I guess I would ask you, why hasn’t he been held accountable or anybody?”
“Well, you know, pardons were given out to many people and they shouldn’t have been given out. Like the unselect committee of political thugs was given a pardon because they destroyed all of the information from two years of hearings and they should be arrested but they were given pardons,” Trump said. “If he wasn’t given a pardon, I could see looking at that.”
Mayorkas was impeached by the House in early 2024 on charges of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” related to immigration enforcement. However, the Senate later voted to dismiss the charges.
Trump, however, is not letting the matter rest. He insisted that even if Mayorkas was acting under orders from then-President Joe Biden, it doesn’t excuse his actions or shield him from accountability.
“He was really doing the orders. And you could say he was very loyal to them because it must have been very hard for him to stand up and sit up and talk about what he allowed to happen to this country and be serious about it,” Trump said. “So he was given orders… but that doesn’t necessarily hold him harmless.”
The former secretary has long been a target of conservative criticism amid the unprecedented surge in illegal immigration under the Biden administration. Trump’s latest comments indicate he’s now weighing legal action over what he views as a deliberate dereliction of duty—signaling a potential push to test the boundaries of holding former officials accountable after leaving office.
The setting for Trump’s fiery remarks—nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”—was deliberately chosen. Nestled deep in the Everglades and surrounded by treacherous, wildlife-filled swampland, the remote facility has been promoted by the White House as a powerful symbol of the administration’s renewed commitment to border security. Officials have emphasized the location’s isolation as a strategic advantage, not a drawback.
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After Mayorkas assumed office in February 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has logged over 10 million encounters with removable noncitizens—including more than 1.5 million known “gotaways” who evaded apprehension that year. Fiscal year 2022 alone saw a record-breaking 2.2 million encounters at the border, fueling accusations that the Biden administration had lost operational control of immigration enforcement.
A key source of controversy has been the Biden administration’s decision to scrap Trump-era policies such as the “Remain in Mexico” program, which required asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases were reviewed. The policy was ended without a viable alternative, triggering a spike in illegal border crossings.
