Furious Alejandro Mayorkas tells Republicans ‘false accusations don’t upset me’ and calls his impeachment over border ‘baseless’ in scathing letter as Republican Party prepares to vote on rolling investigation

Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas lashed out at House Republicans who tried to impeach him, saying he would not be swayed by “politically motivated accusations and personal attacks you have made against me.”

“I assure you that your false allegations do not upset me or distract me from the law enforcement and broader public service duties to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain committed,” he said in a seven-page letter counting letter. letter released Tuesday morning.

The Homeland Security secretary insisted he has done the best he can with the resources at his disposal — and further restrictions will require an act of Congress.

Mayorkas has been involved in bipartisan discussions in the Senate over a national security relief and border package that Republicans in the House of Representatives have largely rejected.

The House of Representatives will bring up two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas: one accusing him of deliberately undermining immigration laws through catch-and-release and another accusing him of obstructing and lying to Congress.

In December 2020, former President Trump’s last full month in office, there were 92,000 border encounters. Mayorkas suggested that the Trump team’s extreme policies were being adopted.

“I believe it is unconscionable to separate children from their parents as a deterrent,” he said, referring to part of the Trump administration’s 2018 zero-tolerance border policy. “I believe law enforcement at the border can be strict and human. It is our responsibility to the American people to overcome our differences and find solutions together.”

Republicans cite Mayorkas’ “deliberate and systematic refusal to obey the law” as hundreds of migrants continue to pour into the US every day.

They allege that Mayorkas is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” amounting to a “refusal to comply with immigration law” and a “breach of the public trust.”

The impeachment resolution stated: “Alejandro N. Mayorkas willfully and systematically refused to enforce immigration laws, failed to control the border at the expense of national security, endangered public safety, and violated the rule of law and the separation of powers in the constitution. , to the obvious detriment of the people of the United States.

Since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2023, Republicans have pushed for Mayorkas’ impeachment — but the momentum faded when they announced the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

The effort returned to the forefront when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., forced a vote to impeach Mayorkas in the House of Representatives and the House referred the articles back to the Homeland Security Committee.

Meanwhile, immigration and border security have come to the forefront of electoral politics as record numbers of migrants attempt to cross the US-Mexico border.

The Republican push also comes at a curious time for Mayorkas.

As the House of Representatives moves to remove him from office, Mayorkas is engaged in difficult negotiations with senators trying to reach an agreement on border policy. He has received praise from senators for his involvement in the trial.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the House will move forward with a vote as soon as possible.

Passage only requires a majority in the House of Representatives. The Senate would hold a trial, and a conviction would require a two-thirds majority, an extremely unlikely outcome in the Democratic-led Senate.

Democrats say Republicans have conducted a sham impeachment trial against Mayorkas and that they do not have the constitutional grounds to impeach the secretary.

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., suggested that the Republican Party’s efforts open the door to making impeachment political.

“The Republicans are going to open the door to impeach a secretary because they don’t like how that secretary is doing his job. Well, what happens if there is another child separation policy?’ he said, referring to Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.

They also say Republicans are part of the problems at the border, with Republicans attacking Mayorkas even as they have failed to give his department the resources it needs to control the situation.

“They don’t want to solve the problem; they want to campaign for it. That is why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself, in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” the department said in a statement on Sunday. declaration.

The two articles are the culmination of a roughly year-long investigation by Republicans into the secretary of state’s handling of the border and what they describe as a crisis of the administration’s own making.

Republicans argue that the administration and Mayorkas specifically abolished policies under Trump that had controlled migration, or instituted their own policies that encouraged migrants from around the world to enter the U.S. illegally through the southern border.

They cite a growing number of migrants who have overwhelmed the capacity of Customs and Border Protection authorities to care and process them.

Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green invited Mayorkas to testify before the committee and provided a date, but Mayorkas had a scheduling conflict that day and he says the committee did not offer another date.

Green then asked Mayorkas to submit written testimony instead. Green said Mayorkas’ letter did not pass muster.

“Secretary Mayorkas’s” eleventh response to the committee is inadequate and unbecoming of a Cabinet Secretary. Our investigation found that Secretary Mayorkas deliberately and systematically failed to comply with the laws of the United States and violated the public trust. The committee would have preferred that he had accepted the many invitations he received since last August to appear before us in person.”

“A letter at 4:48 a.m. on the morning of our markup, repeating the same false claims and doubling down on his commitment to his continued lawless conduct, indicates the contempt with which he views Congress, the American people, and the Constitution sworn. oath to defend.”