House Republicans debate a key vote toward impeaching Mayorkas as border becomes 2024 campaign issue
WASHINGTON — House Republicans worked into the night Tuesday on a key vote toward impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over a “willful and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws as border security becomes a top 2024 election issue.
The Homeland Security Committee spent all day debating two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, a rare charge against a Cabinet official unseen in nearly 150 years, as Republicans make GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s hard-line deportation approach to immigration their own.
“The actions and decisions of Secretary Mayorkas have left us with no other option but to proceed with articles of impeachment,” said Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn.
The articles charge that Mayorkas “refused to comply with Federal immigration laws” amid a record surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and that he has “breached the public trust” in his claims to Congress that the border is secure.
A committee vote, expected later in the night after lawmakers slog through amendments, would send the articles to the full House for a vote as soon as next week.
With an unusual personal appeal Mayorkas wrote in a letter to the committee that it should be working with the Biden administration to update the nation’s “broken and outdated” immigration laws for the 21st century and an era of record global migration.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 impeachment’s bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and Democrats on the panel called the proceedings a stunt and a sham that could set a chilling precedent for other civil servants snared in policy disputes by lawmakers who disagree 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.
Referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan, Thompson said the “MAGA-led impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is a baseless sham.”
The House’s proceedings against Mayorkas have created an oddly split-screen Capitol Hill, as the Senate works intently with the secretary on a bipartisan border security package that is now on life support.
The package being negotiated by the senators with Mayorkas could emerge as the most consequential bipartisan immigration proposal in a decade.
Or it could collapse in political failure as Republicans, and some Democrats, run from the effort.
