House GOP ends Mayorka's impeachment without his public testimony

House Republicans wrapped up impeachment hearings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas on Thursday, just over a week after the proceedings began. They rushed to accuse him of failing to comply with the country's immigration laws.

Republicans are moving ahead without evidence that Mr. Mayorkas committed high crimes or misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment, and are effectively seeking to impeach him because they say immigration policies have endangered the American public.

They plan to file charges against Mr. Mayorkas as early as the end of this month, without any testimony from him or any other Biden administration witness to publicly answer for his conduct, or a single constitutional expert to support their argument that he is guilty of criminal offenses.

Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee invited the secretary to testify at Thursday's hearing, but when Mr. Mayorkas asked for a different date, they told him to submit a written statement by Jan. 28 instead.

“The truth is that Secretary Mayorkas has ignored court orders and laws of Congress and lied to the American people,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the panel, said during the hearing. “Who wants a secretary who can simply ignore the fundamental pillars of the Constitution? We cannot tolerate that, whether they are Republican or Democrat.”

The Republican push to oust Mr. Mayorkas comes as right-wing lawmakers attack the Biden administration's immigration policies and threaten to vote against government funding unless officials crack down on migration at the U.S. border with Mexico. GOP leaders have insisted that Mr. Mayorkas is personally responsible for failing to end a wave of illegal migration and drug trafficking at the border that even Democrats acknowledge has worsened in recent years.

The committee invited two grieving mothers – one who lost a daughter to fentanyl poisoning, and another whose daughter was murdered by a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 who was on parole in the United States – to present the final personal arguments against Mr. Mayorkas on Thursday. Both tearfully testified that they held the secretary responsible for the deaths of their children.

But the lack of direct evidence against the secretary has angered Democrats, who accused Republicans of trying to rush his impeachment through the House of Representatives to appease hardliners in their base.

“This is not a real impeachment — it is a predetermined, pre-planned, partisan political stunt,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the senior Democrat on the panel. “You can't impeach a Cabinet secretary because you don't like the president's policies,” he added.

Republicans have defended their trial as complete, citing the findings of a monthslong investigation they conducted before the hearings that included testimony from more than two dozen witnesses, including senior Border Patrol agents. After Thursday's hearing, all 18 Republican members of the panel indicated they were ready to move forward with impeachment.

“It is unmistakably clear to all of us – and to the American people – that Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and remove Secretary Mayorkas,” they wrote in a joint statement.

House Republicans have threatened to impeach Mr. Mayorkas over the past year, twice dragging him before the panel during that time to castigate him over his department's policies. They have also accused him of lying to lawmakers when he said the government had “operational control” of the border, though Mr. Mayorkas explained that the Border Patrol defines the term differently than the law.

The case against Mr. Mayorkas stalled for several months last year as Republican leaders lacked the votes to impeach him, and some of their members were skeptical about using a serious constitutional remedy to resolve the which is essentially a policy dispute. But the far right has pushed for the move, and Republican Party leaders now believe they have enough support for the charge to squeak through the House of Representatives.

The panel is moving at a breakneck pace, skipping attempts to subpoena firsthand witnesses to testify about Mr. Mayorkas' actions or to support their claim that he deliberately endangered the country.

Democrats have criticized the process and on Thursday invited an immigration policy expert who noted that impeaching Mr Mayorkas would not solve the problems Republicans accuse him of.

“Impeachment will have no impact on the resources available at the border,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a law professor at Princeton University, “and it will have no impact at all on the policies pursued by this administration.”

The push to oust Mr. Mayorkas coincided with his participation in a series of high-stakes bipartisan talks in the Senate to reach a border enforcement compromise that would determine new policies on asylum and detention. Senate Republicans and Democrats have indicated they are close to finalizing such a deal, which Republicans have demanded as the price for sending more emergency military aid to Ukraine for its war against Russia.

But the far right has rebelled against the emerging deal, and Speaker Mike Johnson has said he is reluctant to vote on it unless it closely aligns with a tough border enforcement measure that the House of Representatives passed last year without Democratic support.

“Congress has failed to fix the broken immigration system for decades, and they now have an opportunity to do so,” Mia Ehrenberg, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “Rather than waste time on a baseless impeachment effort, the House majority should join Senate Republicans and Democrats in working with Secretary Mayorkas to fix our broken immigration laws and put the department on the right track.” the right way to finance.”