President Joe Biden’s secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could be the first White House cabinet official to be impeached since 1876.
On Tuesday, House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee passed two articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the administration’s disastrous open border. Lawmakers spent the day making their case either for or against impeachment proceedings as the committee moved forward over the 12-hour markup hearing.
“Secretary Mayorkas is the very type of public official the framers feared,” said GOP Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee. “Someone who would cast aside the laws passed by a co-equal branch of government, replacing those with his own preferences — hurting his fellow Americans in the process.”
Committee members advanced the articles with a late-night vote of 18 to 15 on Tuesday. The articles, for “Willful and Systemic Refusal to Comply With the Law” and “Breach of the Public Trust,” will now move to a full chamber vote that will determine whether the Senate will convene a trial. Removal from office requires two-thirds of the Senate rendering a guilty verdict, which is unlikely given that the upper chamber is dominated by Democrats.
Several House Republicans remain on the fence about the DHS chief’s impeachment, which could jeopardize the success of a full chamber vote. Axios reported Tuesday that at least four GOP members are undecided, or at least closed-lipped, with Republicans only holding a slim six-seat majority. Members include Tom McClintock of California, David Joyce of Ohio, Dan Newhouse of Washington, and Ken Buck of Colorado. Buck, who announced in November he would not seek reelection this fall, told Punchbowl News he “leans no” on the secretary’s impeachment.
Republicans argue Mayorkas has established programs that run contrary to his constitutional obligation to provide effective security along the border. Examples include the expansion of the CBP One App, which allows migrants to enter the country after merely scheduling an appointment with officials, and the prioritization of family reunification parole processes with policies that enable foreigners to wait within the country for visas. Since President Biden took office, an estimated 1.7 million known “gotaways” have come into the country undetected, according to the House Judiciary Committee, bringing the estimated number of illegal border crossers under this administration to about 10 million or more.
In article two, Republicans charged Mayorkas with evading congressional oversight and misleading the public about the status of the border.
“At every turn, our Democrat colleagues have met these oversight efforts with mockery,” Green charged on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, House Democrats have written off the impeachment proceedings as a “political stunt” by “extreme MAGA Republicans.”
“In a process akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, Republicans have cooked up vague, unprecedented grounds to impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the panel’s top Democrat, at Tuesday’s hearing.
Mayorkas defended his tenure in office with a six-page letter to the House Homeland Security Committee as lawmakers moved forward with their charges.
“We have provided Congress and your Committee hours of testimony, thousands of documents, hundreds of briefings, and much more information that demonstrates quite clearly how we are enforcing the law,” Mayorkas wrote. “I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service to which I remain devoted.”
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