U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, raised concerns about the flow of information between government agencies.
He said that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was unaware of the use of Mexican criminal cartels of wristbands for tagging migrants, a fact that is "basic and readily available information," according to Green.
"I was stunned when Secretary Mayorkas confessed to the Senate that he didn’t know about the cartels’ use of wristbands in smuggling operations," Green wrote in an Aug. 22 Twitter post. "Ignorance of this common practice further highlights his dereliction of duty and the administration’s failures to secure our borders."
Green penned a letter to Secretary Mayorkas on Aug. 21 accusing him of being completely unaware of wrist band identification practices within Cartel smuggling, despite “extensive” coverage and “USBP’s acknowledgement” of the issue.
He cites a hearing from March of 2023, in which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned the Secretary on the wristbands with a picture. Secretary Mayorkas answered that he did not know what they were, Green writes in his letter.
In the letter, Green explains that the “savage” practice of wrist band labeling has been “extensively reported on” since 2021.
Cartels use the bands as a means of keeping track of those they have smuggled across the border, effectively treating migrants as nothing more than “profitable cargo.”
The labels, states Green, are marked to indicate the specific cartel to which the migrants owe money. These Cartels use personal information about migrants to threaten them in the case of unpaid debt.
Green states in his letter that this lack of “basic and readily available information” from the leader of Homeland Security is “deeply troubling.”
He goes on to request, on behalf of the Committee on Homeland Security, that Secretary Mayorkas provide certain information about the agency's knowledge of the Cartels’ use of wristband identification. This includes news and other media information, agency briefings, and other sources of intelligence given to Secretary Mayorkas regarding the subject of cartel wristband labeling.
In his letter, Green requests that the information be sent by Sep. 4 at 5 p.m.
The U.S. Border Patrol counted “5.1 million illegal aliens” at the ports of entry to the United States, and “nearly all” of them in the southwest are transported via cartels, according to Green's letter.
