by The House pushed for a vote Tuesday on the removal of Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, accused of willfully refusing to enforce border laws and violating the public trust, as Republicans pursue a partisan impeachment of the policies President Biden’s immigration policy.
Just hours before the scheduled vote, Republican leaders expressed confidence that they would have enough support to impeach Mayorkas. But since Republicans controlled the House by a tiny margin (and Democrats were strongly opposed), they couldn’t afford more than two defections. Two of its members have already said they will vote against it, and some others are still publicly undecided.
On Tuesday morning, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., announced he would vote against the charges, joining Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who had already vowed to break with his party on the issue. A handful of other Republicans remained undecided, and at least one of them, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, expressed concerns about the charges at a closed-door party meeting Tuesday morning.
Still, when asked Tuesday afternoon if he had the votes to impeach him, President Mike Johnson said, “I think so.”
Republican skeptics have privately warned that if the House removes Mayorkas now, making him the first sitting Cabinet member to suffer that fate, future Republican Cabinet members could be subjected to the same treatment.
“I respect everyone’s opinion on this,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday as he emerged from a morning meeting in which some Republicans expressed reservations. “I understand the weight of impeachment.”
“I don’t think there has ever been a Cabinet secretary who so brazenly, openly, willingly and without remorse did exactly the opposite of what federal law called for him to do,” Johnson added, saying that impeachment was ” an extreme measure, but extreme times demand extreme measures.”
Republicans are moving forward despite the assessment by legal experts, including some prominent conservatives, that Mayorkas has committed no high crimes or misdemeanors, the constitutional threshold for impeachment. In a lengthy statement released Tuesday morning, McClintock said he agreed with that assessment.
“They fail to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas committed,” McClintock wrote, adding that the charges “stretch and distort the Constitution to hold the administration accountable for stretching and distorting the law.”
The move is an escalation of Republican efforts to attack Biden and Democrats over immigration, as the two parties clash over how best to secure the border during an election year in which the issue is expected to take center stage. central to the presidential campaign.
House Republicans are pushing for impeachment as they work to kill a bipartisan deal that emerged in the Senate that combined a new injection of funds for Ukraine with a border offensive. They have argued that the measure is too weak and that neither Biden nor Mayorkas can be trusted to secure the border.
If Mayorkas is indicted, the charges would go to the Democratic-led Senate for a trial in which he will almost certainly be acquitted. Leaders have yet to say whether they will hold a full trial, in which a two-thirds majority would be needed to convict the Homeland Security secretary, or try to dismiss the charges outright without hearing them.
The measure scheduled for a vote Tuesday would also appoint 11 impeachment managers to argue the case against Mayorkas in the Senate, including Rep. Mark E. Green, R-Tenn., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. . , Republican of Georgia, who has led the effort to bring constitutional charges against him and seek his removal. The group also includes Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ben Cline of Virginia, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Harriet M. Hageman of Wyoming, Laurel Lee of Florida, Michael McCaul of Texas and August Pfluger. from Texas.
House Democrats have flatly rejected the impeachment attempt, accusing Republicans of misusing a constitutional tool intended to be used only against officials who have committed crimes or abused their positions.
“This sham impeachment attempt is not really about border security; “This is about Republican politics and subversion of the Constitution,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the national security panel, accusing Republicans of “taking orders from Donald Trump.”
Trump’s influence as he attempts to return to the White House has loomed large in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill, particularly when it comes to the Senate border deal, which he has been campaigning against. House Republicans have also frequently cited his immigration legacy in making their arguments against Mayorkas, whom they accuse of dismantling the former president’s border policies for political purposes.
The first article of impeachment accuses Mayorkas of replacing Trump-era policies, such as the program commonly called Remain in Mexico, which required many migrants to wait at the southwest border for their immigration court dates, with “capture” policies. and liberation” that allowed immigrants to roam freely in the United States. Republicans charge that he ignored multiple mandates of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that immigrants “shall be detained” pending decisions on asylum and removal orders, and acted beyond his authority to allow immigrants to enter. to the country on parole.
Democrats have responded forcefully, pointing out that Mayorkas, like previous homeland security secretaries, has the right to set policies to manage the waves of migrants arriving at the border. That includes allowing certain migrants to temporarily enter the country for humanitarian reasons and prioritizing which migrants to detain, particularly when working with limited resources.
The second article accuses Mayorkas of violating the public trust by misrepresenting the status of the border and hindering congressional efforts to investigate it. Republicans base those accusations on a claim by Mayorkas in 2022 that his department had “operational control” over the border, which is defined under a 2006 statute as the absence of illegal migrant or drug crossings. Mayorkas has said he was referring instead to a less absolute definition used by the Border Patrol.
They also accuse Mayorkas of failing to produce documents, including materials he was ordered to give them by subpoena, during an investigation into his border policies and of evading their efforts to get him to testify as part of his impeachment proceedings. Administration officials have responded that Mayorkas has produced tens of thousands of pages of documents in accordance with the panel’s requests. He offered to testify in person, but Republicans on the panel rescinded their invitation to appear after both sides encountered scheduling issues.
