By Lisa Mascaro and Rebecca Santana -
The Associated Press
House Republicans will vote this Tuesday to advance their plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
They allege that he has “deliberately and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws.
But Mayorkas denies mismanagement of the border.
The Homeland Security Committee plans to vote on two articles of
impeachment
against Mayorkas, who was a federal prosecutor, at a time when border security is one of the main issues in the 2024 general elections.
The president of the Lower House, Republican Mike Johnson, explained that an impeachment
against Mayorkas is being promoted
“out of necessity,” and that there will be a full vote “as soon as possible.”
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has denied mismanagement of the border with MexicoJ.
Scott Applewhite/AP
Rarely has a government official faced impeachment for “serious crimes and misdemeanors.”
Democrats
called the procedure a “farce”
that could set a terrifying precedent for other officials.
It would be the first
impeachment
of a federal official in almost 150 years.
The proceedings for a possible impeachment trial of Mayorkas by the House of Representatives have generated a strange division of opinion on Capitol Hill, as the Senate has been working intensively with the secretary on a bipartisan border security package that is in phase terminal.
The package that senators are negotiating with Mayorkas could become the most important bipartisan immigration proposal of the last decade.
Trump, on the campaign trail and in private conversations, has sought to squash that border security agreement.
“I'd rather there be no law than there be a bad one
,” he said over the weekend in Las Vegas.
President Joe Biden, in his own campaign statements in South Carolina, mentioned that if Congress sends him a bill with emergency authority “he will close the border right now” to respond to the large influx of asylum seekers.
In a stinging letter prior to the hearing, Mayorkas refuted the accusations against him.
He defended his work at the Department of Homeland Security and his negotiations with the Senate, and urged the House to focus on updating the country's “broken and outdated” immigration laws for the 21st century and a record era of global migration. .
“We need a legislative solution and only Congress can provide it,” Mayorkas wrote to the panel's Republican chairman, Tennessee Rep. Mark Green.
Mayorkas, who never testified on his own behalf during this possible
impeachment
process —he and the committee could not agree on a date for his appearance—relied on his own story as a child brought to the United States by his parents, who fled from Cuba, and in his career dedicated to the persecution of criminals.
[Mayorkas visits the border and says that it depends on Mexico to reduce the migratory flow]
“Their false accusations do not make me nervous and will not separate me” from public service, he added.
The articles of
impeachment
accuse Mayorkas of “willfully and systematically refusing to comply with federal immigration laws” and of having “broken the public trust” by having indicated to Congress that the border is secure.
Republicans have focused on Mayorkas' management of the southern border, which has seen record migrant crossings over the past year, and on what they have described as a crisis caused by the Democratic Administration itself.
Republicans maintain that the Biden administration, and Mayorkas, scrapped policies in place under Trump or enacted new ones that encouraged migrants from around the world to cross illegally into the United States through the southern border.
“It was time” (for an
impeachment
), said Texas Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who described Mayorkas as the “architect” of the border problems.
“He has what he deserves.”
The hearings for an
impeachment
of Mayorkas in the House of Representatives advanced at full speed in January, while the Republican investigation for a impeachment trial of Biden for his son Hunter's businesses also advanced.
Democrats argued that Mayorkas is acting under his legal authority in the department and that criticism of him does not rise to the level of impeachment.
“House Republicans have provided no evidence that Secretary Mayorkas committed an impeachable crime
,
” declared House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representative of New York.
Jeffries called the process a “political maneuver” ordered by Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., an ally of the former president, who pushed the resolution to a vote.
It is unclear whether House Republicans will have the support of their ranks to move forward with the process, especially with their slim majority
and Democrats expected to vote against it.
Last year, eight House Republicans voted to shelve Greene's proposed
impeachment
resolution rather than sending it to committee, although many of them have since signaled they would be open to it.
If the House agrees to
impeach
Mayorkas, the charges would go to the Senate to be tried.
In 1876, the House impeached Secretary of Defense William Belknap for bribery in government contracts, but the Upper House acquitted him in a trial.