House GOP is moving quickly to impeach Mayorkas as border security becomes top election issue
WASHINGTON — House Republicans are moving quickly to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over what they call his “deliberate and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws, but in a private appeal he argued that they should instead work with the Biden administration on U.S.-Mexico border security. .
The Homeland Security Committee will vote on two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, a former federal prosecutor, on Tuesday as border security becomes a top issue in the 2024 elections. Republicans are internalizing Republican President Donald Trump’s hardline deportation approach to immigration.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the House is moving forward with Mayorkas’ impeachment “out of necessity” with a vote by the full House “as soon as possible.”
Rarely has a Cabinet member faced impeachment proceedings for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and Democrats called the proceedings a “sham” that could set a chilling precedent for other officials. It would be the first impeachment of a Cabinet official in nearly 150 years.
The House of Representatives’ impeachment of Mayorkas has created a curious split-screen Capitol Hill, as the Senate has worked extensively with the secretary on a bipartisan border security package that is now on life support.
The package senators are negotiating with Mayorkas could be the most consequential bipartisan immigration proposal in a decade. Or it could collapse into political failure as Republicans, and some Democrats, run from the effort.
Trump has tried to undermine the Senate border security deal during his campaign and in private conversations. “I’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Trump said in Las Vegas this weekend.
President Joe Biden said in his own campaign speeches in South Carolina that if Congress sends him a bill with emergency powers, he will “close the border right now” to get it under control.
Before the hearing, Mayorkas issued a sharp letter refuting the charges against him.
Mayorkas defended his work at the department and his negotiations with the Senate, and he urged the House of Representatives to focus on updating the nation’s “broken and outdated” immigration laws for the 21st century and an era of record migration at a global level.
“We need a legislative solution and only Congress can provide it,” Mayorkas wrote to the panel’s Republican chairman, Mark Green of Tennessee.
Mayorkas, who never testified on his own behalf during the impeachment proceedings — he and the committee could not agree on a date for his appearance — drew on his own background as a child brought to the U.S. by his parents who fled Cuba, and spent his career prosecuting criminals.
“Your false accusations do not confuse or distract me” from public service, he wrote.
The articles allege that Mayorkas “willfully and systematically refused to comply with federal immigration laws” and that he “violated the public trust” in his claims to Congress that the border is secure.
Republicans are focused on the secretary’s handling of the southern border, which has seen record numbers of migrants in the past year, and on 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 also accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, pointing to comments about border security or vetting of Afghans being transported to the U.S. after military withdrawal from the country.
“It’s high time,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who called Mayorkas the “architect” of the border problems. “He’s got what’s coming to him.”
House impeachment hearings against Mayorkas moved forward in January as Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Biden over business dealings with his son, Hunter Biden, dragged on.
Democrats argued that Mayorkas is acting under his legal authority at the department, and that criticism of him does not rise to the level of impeachment.
“Republicans in the House of Representatives have provided no evidence that Secretary Mayorkas committed a criminal offense,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Jeffries called the impeachment proceedings a “political stunt” ordered by Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a Trump ally, who pushed the resolution to the floor.
It is unclear whether Republicans in the House of Representatives will have the support of their ranks to proceed with the impeachment proceedings, especially given their slim majority and the expectation that Democrats will vote against it.
Last year, eight Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to suspend Greene’s proposed impeachment resolution rather than send it to committee, although many of them have since indicated they are open to it.
If the House of Representatives agrees to impeach Mayorkas, the charges will then go to the Senate for a trial. In 1876, the House impeached Secretary of Defense William Belknap for kickbacks in government contracts, but the Senate acquitted him at a trial.