The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday night
to impeach
Homeland
Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
in an attempt by the Republican majority to punish the Biden administration
for its handling of the border. between the United States and Mexico
after failing last week in a similar attempt.
Mayorkas is now
the first impeached Cabinet secretary in nearly 150 years
.
President Joe Biden called it a “blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant to play petty political games.”
Mayorkas, who did not testify before the impeachment proceedings,
blamed the border crisis squarely on Congress
for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration.
Border security
has
risen to
the forefront of campaign issues,
and Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insists he will launch “the largest internal deportation operation in American history” if he takes back the House. White.
The head of the majority caucus Steve Scalise speaks to the media after the approval of the impeachment trial.
Photo: EFE
The evening's roll call proved tight, as Speaker Mike Johnson's threadbare Republican majority was unable to handle
many deserters or absences
in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to Mayorkas' ouster.
Still, in a historic rebuke,
the House impeached Mayorkas 214-213
.
With the return of Majority Leader Steve Scalise to bolster the GOP's numbers after being away from Washington for cancer care and a nor'easter that affected some others, Republicans rallied,
despite the dissent from their own ranks.
To the Senate, at the end of the month
The charges against Mayorkas
will soon go to the Senate
for a trial, but neither Democratic senators nor even some Republicans
have shown interest in the matter
and it is possible that it will be shelved indefinitely in a committee.
The Senate is expected to receive the articles of impeachment from the House after returning to session
on February 26.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the case against Mayorkas a
“sham impeachment”
and a “new low for House Republicans.”
In a frantic scene of vote counting in the House of Representatives, the GOP effort to impeach Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border
took on an air of
political desperation as Republicans struggle to fulfill their priorities.
Mayorkas
faced two articles of impeachment
brought by the Homeland Security Committee arguing that
he “deliberately and systematically” refused to enforce
existing immigration laws and that
he violated the public trust by lying to Congress and saying the border was secure.
But critics of the impeachment effort said the charges against Mayorkas amount to a political dispute over Biden's border strategy, which hardly rises to the constitutional level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
With information from the Associated Press