House Republicans voted along party lines after midnight Wednesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over a “deliberate and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws.
The Homeland Security Committee debated throughout Tuesday and into the night whether to recommend two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the full House as border security becomes a top issue in the 2024 election.
It's a rare indictment of a Cabinet official not seen in nearly 150 years, as Republicans adopt Republican front-runner Donald Trump's tough-on-deportation approach to immigration as their own.
All Republicans on the committee voted in favor, while Democrats were united in opposition.
“We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer,” said Chairman Mark Green.
House Republicans voted along party lines after midnight Wednesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over a “deliberate and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws
All Republicans on the committee voted in favor, while Democrats were united in opposition
The articles of impeachment accuse Mayorkas of “refusing to comply with federal immigration laws” as the number of migrants surged to record levels and of “breaching the public's trust” in his claims to Congress that the border between the USA and Mexico is safe.
The full House of Representatives could vote on Mayorkas' impeachment as early as next week. If approved, the charges would be sent to the Senate for trial, with senators first able to convene a special committee to review them.
In an unusual personal appeal, Mayorkas – who is in the middle of Senate negotiations on a border security package – wrote in a letter to the committee that he should work with the Biden administration to fix the country's “broken and outdated” immigration laws by the 21st update century, an era of record-breaking global migration.
“We need a legislative solution and only Congress can provide it,” Mayorkas wrote in the pointed letter to the panel’s chairman.
Rarely has a Cabinet member faced charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and Democrats on the panel dismissed the proceedings as a trick and swindle that could set a frightening precedent for other officials embroiled in political disputes by lawmakers who do not agree with the president's approach.
“This is a terrible day for the committee, the United States, the Constitution and our great country,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee’s ranking Democrat.
Referring to Trump's campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” Thompson said that “MAGA's impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is a baseless sham.”
The House case against Mayorkas has created a strange split screen on Capitol Hill as the Senate consciously works with the secretary on a bipartisan border security package that is now on life support.
The Homeland Security Committee — including Chairman Mark Green (pictured right) and Michael McCaul (pictured left) — debated throughout Tuesday and into the night about recommending two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called the procedure a “political stunt” ordered by Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (pictured left).
The package senators are negotiating with Mayorkas could prove to be the most consequential bipartisan immigration proposal in a decade. Or it could fail politically if Republicans and some Democrats run away from the attempt.
Trump tried to thwart the deal during the campaign and in private conversations. “I would rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Trump said in Las Vegas over the weekend.
President Joe Biden said in his own campaign remarks in South Carolina that if Congress sends him a bill with emergency powers, he will “immediately close the border” to control migration.
“I did everything I could do,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday before leaving on a campaign trip to Florida. “Give me the power” through legislation, something he said he had asked for “from the first day I took office.”
Republicans are focused on the secretary's handling of the southern border, which has seen a surge in migrants over the past year, many seeking asylum in the U.S., while drug cartels have used the border with Mexico for human trafficking and brought in deadly fentanyl transport the states.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Trump ally who is often mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick, called it an “invasion.”
Republicans allege that the Biden administration and Mayorkas either scrapped migration control measures in place under Trump or took their own actions that encouraged migrants from around the world to enter the U.S. illegally through the southern border.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Biden and Mayorkas had “caused a catastrophe” at the border and criticized the upcoming Senate package. The GOP leader said the president is now trying to shift blame to Congress for failing to update immigration laws.
Democrat Robert Garcia of California uses a graphic as Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee move to impeach Secretary Mayorkas
Chairman Mark Green leads a full committee appearance to impeach Sec. Mayorkas
Republicans also accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, pointing to statements about border security or vetting of Afghans flown to the U.S. following the military withdrawal from their country.
“It is past time” for impeachment, said Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who called Mayorkas the “architect” of the border problems. “He’s got what’s coming to him.”
The House impeachment hearings against Mayorkas progressed quickly in January, while Republicans' separate impeachment inquiry into Biden over his dealings with his son Hunter Biden dragged on.
Democrats argue that Mayorkas is acting within his legal authority at the department and that criticism of him does not rise to the level of impeachment.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called the proceedings a “political stunt” ordered by Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally who pushed the resolution.
During the hearing, Rep. Robert Garcia referred to Trump's Adolf Hitler-inspired comments that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the United States” and that his proposals to militarize the border were extreme. Trump was re-elected.'
The debate dragged on into the night as Democrats attempted to amend the resolution but failed.
Mayorkas never testified on his own behalf during the rushed impeachment trial — he and the committee could not agree on a date — but in his letter he cited his own background as a child brought to the U.S. by his parents who fled Cuba was brought, and on his own he spent his career pursuing criminals.
Mayorkas sharply criticized House Republicans seeking to remove him from office, saying he was unfazed by the “politically motivated allegations and personal attacks you have made against me.”
“This is about getting Donald Trump re-elected,” Garcia claimed, as House Republicans have shrugged off Senate-led, bipartisan immigration negotiations in favor of pushing through impeachment
“Your false accusations do not unsettle me or deter me from public service,” he wrote.
Green, the Republican committee chairman, disparaged Mayorkas' letter as an “eleventh-hour response” to the committee that was “inappropriate and unbecoming of a Cabinet secretary.”
It's unclear whether Republicans will have the support from within their ranks to push the impeachment vote through the House floor, especially given their slim majority and the fact that Democrats are expected to vote against it.
Last year, eight House Republicans voted to shelve Greene's proposed impeachment resolution, although many of them have since signaled they are open to it. The committee agreed to a revised version.
If the House of Representatives agrees to impeach Mayorkas, the impeachment would next be sent to the Senate. In 1876, the House of Representatives impeached Secretary of Defense William Belknap for bribes on government contracts, but the Senate acquitted him at trial.