Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been exposed for running a vast government censorship enterprise and yet he made a new call to fact-check views that taint the image of the department he oversees.
Sec. Mayorkas joined CBS host Margaret Brennan on the Oct. 13 edition of Face the Nation following the tumult of Hurricane Milton. During the show, Mayorkas ranted about the threat of so-called misinformation about the DHS’s response to the recent hurricane disasters. “Well, I'll tell you what we need. We need individuals, elected officials, people who have the platform to really debunk this false information and we are not having enough of that and I find that to be incredibly irresponsible,” he said.
Brennan teed up Mayorkas for his rant against alleged misinformation with her question about “dangerous misinformation being amplified online,” She asked Mayorkas, "Are you concerned when you see this and how widespread it is that it is a preview of what is to come with the upcoming U.S. election as well, an attempt to manipulate people.”
Mayorkas responded by saying that he was “incredibly concerned,” defining disinformation as “false information deliberately spread to impact people's behavior” and claiming the issue is “extremely pernicious.”
The so-called “false” information Mayorkas referred to included online outrage aimed at the DHS-led FEMA response to Hurricane Milton. For example, X owner Elon Musk took to his platform to highlight a message from a SpaceX engineer warning him about FEMA’s misdeeds. “The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.”
Just received this note from a SpaceX engineer helping on the ground in North Carolina. @FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2024
“Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two…
Mayorkas’ call for censorship and fact-checking follows the major backlash he received for admitting that FEMA “does not have the funds” to properly support Americans through the rest of hurricane season. This came after the agency spent over 1.4 billion since the fall of 2022 to supposedly deal with the migrant crisis at the southern border. FEMA denied both of these claims in its “Hurricane Rumor Response” page designed to mitigate these complaints.
These comments are not a one-off example of Mayorkas’s anti-free speech approach to DHS operations. Mayorkas’s DHS has been notorious for its censorship endeavors.
For example, in 2022 it released a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin that claimed that one of the “key factors” of a “heightened” terrorism threat included “false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.”
Mayorkas also worked to establish a Disinformation Governance Board to collude with Big Tech platforms to target online speech and under Mayorkas’s supervision, the DHS has also financed censorship initiatives across the country that target American schools and journalism.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
