No One Is Happy About the Border. We Asked Mayorkas What Went Wrong. - The New York Times

"You correctly note that many migrants come for economic opportunity, and that they ultimately will not qualify for asylum. Wouldn't it be more orderly, and wouldn't it be responsible governance to be able to deliver a lawful pathway to fill what we have, which is a labor need, and cut the exploitative smugglers out and give individuals a path to arrive lawfully, safely, in an orderly way, to perform labor that we need? They can send remittances home. They can return home when their work is done. Isn't that an element of a workable immigration system?… 

I would say that our capabilities are tremendously constrained. We have an enormous case backlog in the immigration court. The immigration judges have a docket that is just simply overwhelmed. We need more immigration judges. We have more people claiming asylum now, some with merit and some without, but they make their claims, and we have a legal responsibility to adjudicate those claims. We need more asylum officers. The Southern border is 2,200 miles wide. We have relied every year since 2006 on supplemental personnel from the Department of Defense. We need more Border Patrol agents. We need laws that actually provide for the swift adjudication of claims and the prompt removal of those who do not qualify and the prompt grant of relief for those who do. To name just a few…"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/magazine/alejandro-mayorkas-interview.html