The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly voted Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas for intentionally refusing to enforce border laws and betraying the public's trust.
Republicans voted 214 to 213 to make Mayorkas the first sitting Cabinet member in U.S. history to be impeached, over strong opposition from Democrats and conservatives within the party.
This amounts to a partisan indictment of President Biden's immigration policies by Republicans, who will use the surge in migrants crossing the Mexican border during his presidency as a political weapon against him and Democrats in this year's election. It is said that
Biden condemned the House vote in a statement Tuesday night.
“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for this blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship targeting honorable public servants for petty political maneuvering.”
The vote came a week after the House rejected the charges against Mayorkas, but Republicans, who narrowly control the chamber, failed in their efforts to muster a majority.
This puts Mr. Mayorkas in the same position as previous presidents and government officials who have been impeached on charges of personal corruption or other wrongdoing.
But the charges against him broke history by failing to identify any such criminal conduct and instead effectively declaring the policy choices Mayorkas made were constitutional crimes. This approach threatens to lower the bar for impeachment, which has already been lowered in recent years, but the bar for impeachment, once Congress's most powerful means of removing tyrants from power, has become less political. It would be reduced to a weapon used in struggle.
A chorus of constitutional experts, including Democrats, a former Homeland Security secretary, the nation's largest police union, and conservatives, say the impeachment is a blatant attempt to settle policy disputes with constitutional punishment. denounced. They said Republicans have not presented evidence that Mr. Mayorkas' conduct rises to the level of a felony or misdemeanor, the constitutional standard for impeachment.
The charges against Mr. Mayorkas are expected to fail in the Democratic-led Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required for conviction, and even some Republicans have argued that the effort will be null and void upon arrival. There is. The office of New York Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the House plans to send articles of impeachment to the Senate in the last week of February, and senators are scheduled to be sworn in as jurors the next day.
“The sole reason for this impeachment is for Speaker Johnson to further appease Donald Trump,” Schumer said in a statement, adding that House Republicans “failed to present any evidence of an impeachable offense.” added.
But House Republicans argued Mayorkas had failed in his constitutional duties and defended impeachment as necessary.
“Congress took decisive action to protect constitutional order and to hold accountable public officials who violated their oaths of office,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark, Republican of Tennessee, who prepared the complaint. said Congressman E. Green. Mr. Mayorkas said in a statement. He added that the proceedings “demonstrated beyond any doubt that Secretary Mayorkas intentionally and systematically refused to comply with U.S. law and betrayed the public's trust.”
Three Republicans sided with Democrats on the charges: Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, and Rep. Tom McClintock of California. They warned that impeaching ministers for how they carried out their duties would weaken the heavy constitutional penalties and do nothing to solve the serious immigration problem.
“We have to end this use of impeachment. If we have policy differences, we have other tools,” Buck said in an interview after the vote. “It's becoming a game-changer,” he added. It should actually be higher than this. ”
But unlike last week, when Republican defections were enough to kill the bill, on Tuesday leaders showed enough lawmakers to approve the charges, albeit by a narrow margin. . The No. 2 Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise (Louisiana), has returned to Washington from treatment for blood cancer, but another pair of Republicans, Rep. Brian Mast and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (Florida), are returning to Washington from treatment for blood cancer. ) did not vote. The Republicans were still able to win because two Democrats, Rep. Lois Frankel of Florida and Rep. Judy Chu of California, were absent. If either Democrat had voted, Republicans would have failed to impeach Mayorkas for the second time.
in statement Chu said in a social media post that she would have voted against impeachment because she tested positive for coronavirus.in Video posted Mast said on social media that he and Frankel were stranded at Palm Beach International Airport, waiting for their plane, which had mechanical problems, to be repaired.
In approving the charges, the House appointed 11 Republicans as impeachment managers, including right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has led the charge against Greene and Mayorkas.
Mr. Greene's committee produced a report calling for the removal of Secretary Mayorkas from his position.
The first of the two charges approved Tuesday is for violating Trump-era policies, including the program commonly known as “Remain in Mexico,” which required many immigrants to wait at the southwest border until their court dates. Mayorkas has been accused of replacing it with “catch-and-release.” ” A policy that allows immigrants to roam freely within the United States. Republicans say Mr. Mayorkas has overstepped his authority to parole and allow immigrants into the country, ignoring multiple mandates in the Immigration and Nationality Act that say immigrants are “detained” pending an asylum or deportation order. He is accusing the government of acting in such a manner.
Democrats strongly objected, saying that Mayorkas, like other Homeland Security secretaries, has the right to set policies to manage the wave of migrants arriving at the border. This includes allowing certain migrants to enter the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons and prioritizing which migrants to detain, especially when working with limited resources.
The second article accuses Mayorkas of betraying the public's trust by lying about the situation at the border and blocking Congress' efforts to investigate him. Republicans based these accusations on Mayorkas' 2022 claim that his department exercised “operational control” of the border, defined by a 2006 law as the absence of illegal immigration and drug entry. Based on. Mayorkas said he was instead referring to a less absolute definition used by the Border Patrol.
They also accused Mayorkas of failing to produce documents, including subpoenaed materials, during an investigation into his border policies and of evading efforts to get him to testify as part of impeachment proceedings. are doing. Administration officials countered that Mayorkas produced tens of thousands of pages of documents at the committee's request. He offered to testify in person, but Republicans on the committee rescinded their request to appear because of scheduling issues on both sides.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg on Tuesday night accused House Republicans of “trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than addressing serious challenges at the border.”
“House Republicans have unfairly tarnished a dedicated public servant who has served our country enforcing our laws for more than 20 years,” she added. “Secretary Mayorkas and the Department of Homeland Security will continue to work every day to keep the American people safe.”
On Tuesday, hours before the vote, the U.S. Border Patrol released new data showing the number of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted by 50% in January compared to December. But December was the highest on record, and the numbers have reached record levels under the Biden administration.
The only other Cabinet member to suffer the same fate was William Belknap, who served as Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. Mr. Belknap resigned in 1876, just before the House impeached him for corruption after discovering evidence that he had engaged in rampant fraud, including accepting kickbacks. The Senate later acquitted him.
Hamed Areaziz and guo keira Contributed to the report.
