The Biden administration has completely erased the southern border, turning it from a well-ordered place under Trump into a region of chaos and squalor, all of it set to spread into the United States. Given the situation down there, it came as a surprise to learn on Saturday that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas decided to wipe out the formerly bipartisan Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Despite the Biden administration’s effort to censor news about the missing southern border, the news is out there: Thousands of illegal aliens are arriving daily, bringing with them COVID, gang members, international terrorists, sex offenders, and God alone knows what other raff and scaff in the mix of decent people reasonably taking advantage of an opportunity to leave their impoverished nations for America’s apparently unlimited welfare. Those who have already arrived are living in squalid internment camps. The administration is now spending massive sums of taxpayer money to house some in hotels and to fly others to our northern border.

One would think that, with this burgeoning crisis on our southern border, now is not the time to make massive changes in the Department of Homeland Security. And yet that is precisely what Mayorkas did, purging almost the entire Homeland Security Advisory Council:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has fired almost all members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) -- the latest sign by the agency of its intention to move away from the practices of the prior administration.

Mayorkas, in a letter sent Friday and obtained by Politico, told the committee that he is ending the terms of the 32 current members, and intends to “reconstitute” the council once a “new model” has been developed.

HSAC was set up for members, who are unpaid, to use their experience and expertise of Homeland Security issues like counterterrorism and immigration enforcement to offer guidance to the secretary.

Its current membership included Trump-era officials such as former Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan -- but include those appointed by secretaries by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

There is no indication that Mayorkas has 32 new members lined up to fill those positions immediately. So, even as our Homeland Security is being drastically compromised, Mayorkas got rid of people who understood the situation and had some collective knowledge about how to deal with it.

When I was young and made a decision my mother thought was stupid, she used to say to me, “Well, on your head be it,” by which she meant that I was going to suffer some pretty ugly consequences down the line. She wasn’t always right but she usually was.

My first thought when I heard what Mayorkas had done was, “Well, on your head be it,” but that’s wrong. I don’t care if Mayorkas gets in trouble for this. What I care deeply about is the incredible risk to which he’s exposing America from terrorism, gangs, and drug cartels. 

And let me say again what cannot be said enough: What Biden is doing is unconstitutional. Someone with access to the federal courts in Texas needs to sue immediately to stop this. Art. II of the Constitution requires that the President of the United States, as the chief executive officer of the nation, “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.…”

Executive discretion gives the President some leeway to pay more attention to enforcing some laws rather than others. However, even executive discretion does not allow the President to overthrow the law entirely, as Biden is doing with the border. Last I heard, he was still President of the United States, not Dictator of the United States. The American President does not have the power to erase the border. And to the extent that the people streaming in are not fleeing war or genocide, they are not refugees as that term is understood.

But I’m just the old woman yelling at the clouds, aren’t I? No one in power in D.C., whether Democrat or Republican, wants to stop this. Leftists are getting new voters and Chamber of Commerce Republicans are getting cheap labor. As for the rest of us, well, we’re not getting much of anything good, are we?

IMAGE: Alejandro Mayorkas. YouTube screengrab.