Republicans in the House of Representatives are again trying to impeach Mayorkas on border allegations
Republicans in the House of Representatives will try for a second time Tuesday to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, on charges of willfully refusing to enforce border laws and violating the public trust, after their first attempt at the partisan charge ended in a stunning defeat.
Three Republicans joined all Democrats last week in rejecting impeachment charges, leaving the Republican Party, which has a slim margin, just one vote short of a majority, in a humiliating spectacle in the House of Representatives.
The decisive moment came when Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, who Republicans had expected to miss the vote, arrived in a hospital gown, fresh from abdominal surgery, to cast his “no” vote. Because Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and majority leader, was absent while undergoing treatment for blood cancer, the Republican Party was unable to make up the deficit.
Republicans recalled Scalise to Washington this week and expressed confidence Tuesday that their second attempt would be successful. That would put Mr. Mayorkas in the company of former presidents and government officials who have been impeached on charges of personal corruption, election interference and even incitement of insurrection.
But the accusations leveled by Republicans have broken with history by failing to identify such a crime, and instead effectively declaring the Biden administration's policy choices as a constitutional crime. The approach threatened to lower the bar for impeachment proceedings — which has already fallen in recent years — reducing what was once Congress' most powerful tool for removing despots from power to a weapon that could be used in political battles.
Democrats, former Homeland Security secretaries, the nation's largest police union and a chorus of constitutional law experts — including conservatives — have dismissed the impeachment effort as a blatant attempt to resolve a policy dispute with constitutional punishment , without any evidence that the secretary's behavior has increased. to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Last week, only three Republicans in the House of Representatives — Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California — agreed and joined Democrats in voting against the impeachment resolution.
“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, will not secure the border or hold Mr. Biden accountable,” Mr. Gallagher said in a statement at the time, adding that an impeachment was “a dangerous new precedent that will be weaponized against future Republican administrations.”
The Republicans who broke with their party received significant political backlash for their insubordination. Last weekend, Gallagher, who had attracted a primary challenger after his impeachment vote, announced he would not seek re-election.
Although other Republicans had expressed skepticism about the allegations before last week's vote, party leaders managed to keep them contained. To prevail on Tuesday, they must maintain that support.
The vote to impeach Mr. Mayorkas comes amid a broader battle in Congress over how to address border security and national security. Tuesday's vote will come just hours after the Senate passes a bipartisan national security package that would provide $60.1 billion to help Ukraine fight a Russian invasion, $14.1 billion to help Israel in its war against Hamas and nearly $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Syria. conflict areas, including the Palestinians in Gaza.
Mr. Mayorkas had helped senators negotiate an earlier version of the legislation that tied foreign aid to border crackdowns, something Republicans called for. But Senate Republicans scrapped that measure last week, under pressure from far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives and former President Donald J. Trump, who described it as too weak.
Democrats have argued that the effort to oust Mr. Mayorkas is merely a sign of loyalty by Republicans in Congress to Mr. Trump, who has made clear he wants to make the immigration crackdown a centerpiece of his presidential campaign .
“The truth is that the extreme MAGA Republicans who control the House of Representatives don't want solutions, they want a political issue,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the homeland security panel, during last week's floor debate. He accused Republicans of trying to “twist the Constitution and the Secretary's record to cover up their inability and unwillingness to work with Democrats to strengthen border security.”
But Republicans leading the effort were determined to cast Mr. Mayorkas as the main culprit for the state of the border and the surge of migrants and illegal drugs crossing in recent years.
“He is guilty of aiding and abetting the complete invasion of our country by criminals, gang members, terrorists, murderers, rapists and more than 10 million people from 160 countries in American communities across the United States,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia. who led the effort to secure his removal, said during floor debate last week.
The charges against Mr. Mayorkas have no chance of leading to a conviction in the Democratic-led Senate, where he would need two-thirds of the vote and even some Republicans have noted that he will be dead on arrival. It was not clear whether leaders there would move forward with holding a full trial or vote to immediately dismiss the charges against Mr. Mayorkas.
The House of Representatives planned to appoint 11 Republicans to make the case against Mr. Mayorkas as impeachment managers, including Ms. Greene and Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, which approved the articles of impeachment last month prepared. They were also producing at the time a report in which they said of the Cuban-born secretary that they were “deporting Secretary Mayorkas from office.”
Republicans have been promising to impeach Mr. Mayorkas for more than a year, but the proceedings were rushed over the course of just a few weeks, in what Democrats labeled a lame attempt to pull off a “sham” impeachment. Republicans have defended the speed of their procedures, arguing that an earlier investigation spent months examining Mr. Mayorkas' policies.
The first of the two charges accuses Mr. Mayorkas of replacing Trump-era policies such as the program commonly called Remain in Mexico, which kept many migrants waiting at the southwestern border for their court hearings, with a “capture” en-release” policy that allowed migrants to move freely in the United States. Republicans allege that Mr. Mayorkas has ignored multiple mandates of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that migrants “shall be detained” pending decisions on asylum and removal orders, and that he has acted beyond his authority to allow migrants to enter the country conditionally to let in.
Democrats have pushed back strongly, noting that Mr. Mayorkas has the right to enact policies to control 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.
Critics of the case have pointed out that the secretary's resignation is unlikely to lead to a change in the Biden administration's border policy, and that officials will not be given the powers and resources they need to enforce immigration laws more effectively can maintain.
“While Republicans in the House of Representatives waste time playing politics, Secretary Mayorkas is enforcing our laws and working to keep America safe,” Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement. “Members of Congress who take these efforts seriously should work with the administration by fixing our nation's broken immigration laws and properly funding the department's vital missions rather than facilitating this farce of an impeachment.”
The only other Cabinet secretary to be removed was William Belknap, the Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. Belknap resigned in 1876, just before the House of Representatives was accused of corruption after finding evidence that he was involved in rampant misconduct, including accepting bribes. The Senate later acquitted him.