Republicans are clamoring for votes to impeach mayors across the border

The House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on whether to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary, on charges that he willfully refused to enforce border laws and betrayed the public trust, while Republicans pursue a partisan charge filing against President Biden's immigration policies.

But with just hours to go before the scheduled vote, it was unclear whether leaders would have enough Republican Party support to indict Mr. Mayorkas. Now that Republicans have control of the House of Representatives by a minuscule margin – and Democrats are firmly against it – they can't afford more than two defections. Two of their members have already said they will vote no, while a few others are still publicly undecided.

On Tuesday morning, Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, announced he would vote against the charges, joining Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who has already pledged to break with his party on the issue. A handful of other Republicans remained on the fence, and at least one of them — Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin — expressed concern about the allegations during a closed-door party meeting Tuesday morning.

Skeptics have privately warned that if the House of Representatives impeaches Mr. 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,” Chairman Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday as he left the meeting. “I understand the weight that impeachment carries.”

“I don't believe there has ever been a Cabinet Secretary who so blatantly, openly, deliberately and without remorse did the exact opposite of what federal law asked him to do,” Mr. Johnson added, calling impeachment “an extreme measure , but extreme. times call for extreme measures.”

Republicans are pressing ahead despite the assessment of legal experts, including some prominent conservatives, that Mr. Mayorkas has not committed high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional threshold for impeachment. In a lengthy statement released Tuesday morning, Mr. McClintock said he agreed with that assessment.

“They fail to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas committed,” Mr. McClintock wrote, adding that the charges “stretch and twist the Constitution to hold the government accountable for stretching and twisting the law.”

The move marks an escalation of Republicans' efforts to attack Mr. Biden and Democrats over immigration, as the two parties clash over how best to secure the border during an election year when the issue is expected to will be central to the presidential campaign.

House Republicans are pushing ahead with impeachment as they try to overturn a bipartisan deal brokered in the Senate that would see a new injection of funding for Ukraine paired with a crackdown on borders. They have argued that the measure is too weak and that neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Mayorkas can be trusted to secure the border.

If Mr. Mayorkas is impeached, the charges will 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, which will require a two-thirds majority to convict the Homeland Security secretary, or seek to dismiss the charges outright without hearing them.

The measure, which will be voted on Tuesday, would also appoint 11 impeachment managers to make the case against Mr. Mayorkas in the Senate, including Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. , Republican of Georgia, who led the charge to charge him with constitutional charges and call for 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 . of Texas.

House Democrats have roundly rejected the impeachment effort, accusing Republicans of abusing a constitutional tool intended only to be used against officials who have committed crimes or abused their office.

“This sham impeachment effort is not really about border security; it's about Republican politics and subversion of the Constitution,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the senior Democrat on the homeland security panel, accusing Republicans of “taking their marching orders from Donald Trump.”

Mr. Trump's influence as he tries to return to the White House has loomed large in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill, especially when it comes to the Senate border deal, which he has campaigned against. House Republicans have also often cited his immigration legacy in arguing against Mayorkas, whom they accuse of dismantling the former president's border policies for political purposes.

The first article of impeachment accuses Mr. Mayorkas of following Trump-era policies, such as the program commonly called “Remain in Mexico,” which left many migrants waiting at the southwest border for their immigration court appointments. replacing it with a 'catch-and-release' policy that allowed groups of migrants to roam freely in the United States. They accuse him of ignoring multiple mandates of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that migrants “shall be detained” pending decisions on asylum and removal orders, and of acting beyond his authority to allow migrants to enter the country conditionally to let.

Democrats have pushed back strongly, noting that Mr. Mayorkas, like previous Homeland Security secretaries, has the right to enact policies to manage the waves of migrants arriving at the border. That includes temporarily allowing certain migrants into the country on humanitarian grounds and prioritizing which migrants to detain, especially if they operate with limited resources.

The second article accuses Mr. Mayorkas of betraying the public trust by misrepresenting the state of the border and obstructing Congress' efforts to investigate him. Republicans are basing these accusations on a 2022 assertion by Mr. Mayorkas that his department had “operational control” of the border, which a 2006 statute defines as the absence of any unlawful migrant or drug crossings. Mr. Mayorkas has said he was referring instead to a less absolute definition used by the Border Patrol.

They also accuse Mr. Mayorkas of failing to produce documents, including materials he was subpoenaed to give them, during an investigation into his border policies and of blocking their efforts to have him testify as part of their had avoided impeachment proceedings. Administration officials have countered that Mr. Mayorkas 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 withdrew their invitation to appear after the two sides faced scheduling issues.