This week, Beltway Republicans proved they could walk and chew gum at the same time. At least for a brief spell. While Republicans focused on the incompetence and disappearance of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and the circus clown named Hunter Biden, they also turned up the heat on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by holding hearings on his willful failure to protect our southern border.

It’s called the Department of Homeland Security, after all, but there’s no security in allowing millions of undocumented military-age men, criminals, and drug dealers from around the globe to enter our country illegally.

As for the hearing, The Washington Post reports that Republicans “maintained that Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty to secure the border, citing a 2006 law that requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to maintain ‘operational control’ over the border.”

Chances are, it’s more talk than action. Lately, it seems, that’s what Republicans do best.

In reality, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and had the GOP fulfilled its promises, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. It has held the reins of congressional power several times in the past two decades, in some cases with a Republican president, but made little effort to curb the invasion of our southern border.

Republicans have promised to go after Mayorkas since the 2022 midterm elections. Indeed, we were calling for his impeachment a year ago. But this effort, such as it is, is expected to hit a wall just as the threats to impeach Joe Biden plod along without much hope.

Even constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley agrees, writing, “He can be legitimately accused of effectuating an open border policy, but that is a disagreement on policy that is traced to the President.”

Republicans largely have stopped talking about a Biden impeachment, which makes sense during an election year. That makes Mayorkas the fall guy. The problem is, if Mayorkas is impeached and removed from office, he’ll simply be replaced by another border denier.

Meanwhile, the imaginary line that once separated the U.S. from Mexico is nothing more than a tourist attraction for the media, congressional Republicans who want to look important, and, of course, millions of international sightseers who plan to stay forever.

“U.S. agents recorded nearly 250,000 illegal crossings along the southern border in December, the highest one-month total ever, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data,” reports The Washington Post. A quarter of a million people in one month. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough buses in the country to shuttle that many illegals to New York and Chicago.

As for the number of illegal aliens released into the country, Mayorkas admitted earlier this week that 85% of them are set free in the interior of the country.

“The number of illegal aliens released into the U.S. in December is nearly the same number of people the Department of Homeland Security employs,” The Daily Signal adds. “Additionally, if 85% of the 3.2 million illegal aliens encountered in all of fiscal year 2023 were in fact released into the U.S., that’s 2.7 million — more than the population of 15 U.S. states, including New Mexico, Nebraska, and Idaho.”

Instead of taking responsibility for their failure to enforce the law and defend our country from a foreign invasion, Democrats are throwing their hands up and, of course, NBC agrees, making a ridiculous claim that Biden has “run out of options.”

The problem is so serious that Texas recently passed a law that allows law enforcement officials to arrest any illegals in Texas and allows judges to issue orders to remove people from the country — although the law doesn’t go into effect until March. Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration has already filed a lawsuit to stop the measure.

Texas, to its credit, seems serious about its defense of the border, having recently seized property at Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande.

As for the Democrats, they, too, are serious — about appearances. They realize that footage of tens of thousands of illegals storming the border on a daily basis is probably not a good look during a presidential election year, so the Biden administration has reached out to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for help. As we recall, Donald Trump also reached out to the Mexican president — to tell him that all illegals would remain in Mexico until their scheduled asylum hearings in the U.S. But that’s the difference between Biden and Trump: When it comes to our nation’s sovereignty, Trump tells while Biden asks.

As expected, there’s a price tag in exchange for AMLO’s assistance.

As NBC reports: “López Obrador called on the U.S. to approve a plan that would deploy $20 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries, suspend the U.S. blockade of Cuba, remove all sanctions against Venezuela and grant at least 10 million Hispanics living in the U.S. the right to remain and work legally. All of those are extremely tall demands of an administration headed into a re-election campaign that may hinge on how firmly Biden is able to get control of the southern U.S. border.”

Don’t expect anything to change anytime soon.

Some Republicans want the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass and President Biden to sign a bill into law that would ban migrants from seeking asylum at the border, build 900 miles of border wall, and grant Border Patrol more authority to deny illegal entries. But that’s not going to happen.

There is some hope, though. If Republicans can win the White House in 2024, win the Senate, and hold onto their (dwindling) majority in the House, something might give. But that’s going to take something the GOP doesn’t seem to have: political courage.