WASHINGTON — Members of the House Homeland Security Committee voted early Wednesday to advance the Republican-led impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the full House for a vote.
House Republicans, who advanced the articles in an 18-15 party-line vote, accuse Mayorkas and the Biden administration of disregarding federal laws on immigration and seek to make Mayorkas the second Cabinet official to be impeached in U.S. history. The committee’s action sets up a formal vote to impeach Mayorkas in the full House, which will come next week, according to Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.
Mayorkas and Democrats have pushed back, arguing that the impeachment effort is political.
According to the first impeachment article set forth by House Republicans, Mayorkas “has willfully and systemically refused to comply with Federal immigration laws.” Republicans blame Mayorkas for allowing millions of people to enter the country illegally, “with many unlawfully remaining” in the U.S., according to the articles.
The second impeachment article accuses him of breaching the “public trust” and “knowingly” obstructing “lawful oversight of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The chair of the Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., opened the meeting, which began Tuesday morning, by saying Mayorkas “has willfully and systematically refused to comply with the laws passed by Congress and breached the trust of Congress and the American people. The results have been catastrophic and have endangered the lives and livelihoods of all Americans.”
Referring to the impeachments of Donald Trump in the last Congress, Green said the committee has been “meticulous” in its methodology. “Today is a grave day. We have not approached this day or this process lightly. Secretary Mayorkas’ actions have forced our hand,” he said.
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the panel, countered in his opening statement that “this is a terrible day for the committee, the United States Constitution and our great country. … The sham impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is a baseless 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,” Thompson continued. “Refusal to follow the law and a breach of public trust — neither of the impeachment charges the committee will consider today are a high crime and misdemeanor under Article II of the Constitution.”
Asked before the hearing whether the allegations against Mayorkas meet the necessary requirements for impeachment, Green responded: “Absolutely.”
Green said he expected “lots of procedural motions” at Tuesday’s hearing and a “united front from our side.”
During a Fox Business interview Tuesday, Scalise said the impeachment resolution will “be on the floor next week for the full House to vote on,” providing the clearest timing yet on an impeachment vote.
Mayorkas pushed back in a letter to Green early Tuesday, noting that he had testified before the committee seven times and accusing it of ignoring his offer to testify again on another date.
“The problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new. … Our immigration laws were simply not built for 21st century migration patterns,” Mayorkas wrote, noting that he is involved in bipartisan talks with senators to come to an agreement on changes to immigration and asylum laws.
“You claim that we have failed to enforce our immigration laws. That is false,” he added, writing that DHS has provided Congress with “hours of testimony, thousands of documents, hundreds of briefings, and much more information that demonstrates quite clearly how we are enforcing the law.”
Among the data the department has shared with House Republicans, Mayorkas wrote, is that the Biden administration has “removed, returned, or expelled more migrants in three years than the prior Administration did in four years.”
Green responded to Mayorkas’ letter Tuesday morning, saying the “eleventh-hour response to the committee is inadequate and unbecoming of a Cabinet secretary.”
The impeachment articles come at the conclusion of a yearlong investigation of the situation at the southern border by Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, a member of the committee, said Mayorkas failed to uphold “his own oath of office to protect the nation from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who tried to bring legislation to impeach Mayorkas to the House floor twice last year, said Monday that Republicans “have all the evidence showing that Mayorkas has willfully violated his oath of office. … We’re going to impeach him tomorrow.”
Democrats on the committee released a report Monday accusing Republicans of “abusing Congress’ impeachment power.”
“Republicans’ baseless investigation into Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is a politically motivated sham to appease extreme MAGA Members and partisan special interest groups,” Democrats said in the report.
Michael Chertoff, a homeland security secretary in the administration of President George W. Bush, and constitutional scholars have also argued in recent days that the GOP investigation has not hit the threshold of impeachment.
“If the impeachment clause could talk, it would beg for Republicans to stop shaming its name,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who was the lead impeachment lawyer for Democrats during the first impeachment of Donald Trump before he ran for Congress. “There is no treason. There is no bribery. There is no high crime and misdemeanor.”
Goldman, who is now on the Homeland Security Committee, argued that impeachment proceedings are “not going through the Judiciary Committee, because that committee requires due process for impeachment and there has been no due process here.”
Democrats have repeatedly argued that Republicans are resisting a new border policy that Mayorkas is helping to negotiate between senators and the administration because the bill would give President Joe Biden an advantage in the 2024 election.
“They know that there’s a bill potentially that would give us new law to help us at the southwestern border. President Trump and many of the House Republicans are fighting to oppose that because they think it would give President Biden some benefit at the elections at the polling places,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md.
Some moderate Republicans said Tuesday that they support impeaching Mayorkas.
“I’ve intended to because we have a disaster at the border. And I would say there’s so many laws on the books that he could enact or enforce, and he does not,” said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb.
Rep. Nick LaLota, a New York moderate, also plans to vote to impeach Mayorkas. “He’s been derelict in his duty. He’s broken the public trust. He’s violated the laws of this Congress. … He’s got to go,” LaLota said.
Mayorkas concluded his letter to Green on Tuesday with an emotional recounting of his work in public service, noting that his parents brought him to the U.S. from Cuba and instilled in him a “reverence for law enforcement” that led him to lead DHS.
“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” he wrote.
