By Rebecca Santana —
The Associated Press
The House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, will vote again this Tuesday whether to open an impeachment trial against the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro Mayorkas, for the management of the Government of Democrat Joe Biden on the border with Mexico.
An earlier vote last week failed due to lack of a sufficient majority in the House.
If they succeed this time it would be the first time that an
impeachment
process has been opened against a member of the Government.
Republicans have been investigating Mayorkas in the House for months, as part of their strategy to turn immigration and border security into a key electoral issue.
Didn't this already happen last week?
Yes. Republicans voted to
impeach
Mayorka on February 6 but failed.
With Democrats united against the initiative, they needed every vote they could muster from their slim majority.
But on a dramatic night, Republicans fell short with three dissenting votes from within their party.
A fourth Republican changed his vote from yes to no in a tactical move that
allowed the impeachment question to be revisited
, so that the final result was 214-216 votes.
The Republicans thus promised to raise the measure again.
Mayorkas, during a Senate hearing in Washington, DC, on November 16, 2021. Stefani Reynolds / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
What is happening at the border?
Immigrants have long been crossing the southern border of the United States in search of a new life in the country, but not like what is happening now.
Arrests for crossing illegally from Mexico reached an all-time high in December.
In fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol intercepted 2.2 million people crossing the border illegally.
You have to go back decades to see comparable figures.
[One of the decisive votes that thwarted Mayorkas' trial attempt was from a Texas congressman]
But statistics are not always a perfect measure.
The figures from the 1990s and 2000s are considered much lower than reality because immigrants
then tried to evade the authorities
by entering the United States instead of requesting asylum.
Decades ago, the typical immigrant trying to reach the United States was a man from Mexico looking for work, trying to avoid Border Patrol agents.
Now they continue to come from Central and South America, but also from much more distant countries such as China, Afghanistan or Mauritania.
And they often look to agents to seek asylum in the United States.
At times, the number of immigrants has overwhelmed the response capacity of the authorities, who have had to temporarily close border crossings to process them.
It has also had repercussions far from the border.
Migrants arriving in cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston and Denver strain local services, prompting Democratic officials to pressure the federal government to take action.
What do the Republicans say?
Republicans have blamed all of this on Mayorkas and have said that, therefore, he has to go.
They say the Biden Administration has undone policies that were in place under Republican Donald Trump's administration that they say deterred immigrants, and has implemented policies that attract more.
The House Homeland Security Committee has held hearings over the past year in which Republicans have repeatedly attacked Mayorkas.
Witnesses have included an Arizona sheriff;
families who have lost loved ones to the fentanyl crisis;
experts in constitutional law;
and former Homeland Security officials who served under Trump.
House Republicans say Mayorkas is violating immigration laws by not detaining enough immigrants and by implementing a humanitarian parole program that they say bypasses Congress to allow entry into the country of people who would otherwise way they would not qualify to do so.
And they also allege that he lied to them when he said things like the border is secure.
All of this, they argue, has created a prolonged crisis that is having repercussions throughout the country, is directly his fault and justifies impeachment.
However, the three House Republicans who voted against impeachment argued that the charges did not meet that requirement.
What does Mayorkas say?
Democrats and many legal experts have said this is essentially a political dispute and that Republicans do not like the immigration measures that the Biden administration, through Mayorkas, has put in place.
This is an issue for voters to decide, not an issue that rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary to impeach a Cabinet official, they argue.
“The fact that a congressional party disapproves, even strongly, of the president's policies on immigration or other matters within the secretary's jurisdiction does not make him subject to impeachment,” declared the University Law professor. of Missouri Frank O. Bowman during a committee hearing in January.
Mayorkas and his supporters have often asserted that it is not the Administration's actions that are attracting migrants to the southern border, but rather that they are part of a global phenomenon of migrants, driven by political, economic and climate upheaval, who
are more willing to embark on life-threatening journeys to seek a better life.
They argue that the Administration has attempted to address the chaos at the border.
For the past year, Mayorkas has been the public face of a policy that aims to create pathways for immigrants to reach the country, such as an app that allows them to schedule a time to arrive at the border and apply for entry.
And, they argue, that policy has new efforts to limit who can get asylum and order aggressive deportations.
But the administration and its supporters maintain that the Department of Homeland Security faces an outdated
and underfunded
immigration system that only Congress has the power to fix.
So far, they argue, it has not.
What will happen next?
The first question is whether House Republicans have the votes this time.
The vote is scheduled for Tuesday night.
Mayorkas will keep his position even if they succeed because it is the Senate that decides whether an indicted official is convicted and, therefore, removed from office.
Conviction is much more difficult than impeachment (two-thirds of the Senate must vote in favor, compared to a simple majority in the House), and Democrats also control the Upper House with 51 seats compared to 49 Republicans.
That means that all Republicans, as well as a considerable number of Democrats, would have to vote to convict Mayorkas, a highly unlikely scenario considering that even some Republicans are opposed to the idea of impeachment.
Mayorkas has said he is willing to defend himself in the Senate if it goes to trial.
In the meantime, he says, he is focused on his work.