House Republicans are barreling ahead with their effort to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, part of a broader effort to make immigration and border security a defining issue of this year’s presidential election.
The House homeland security committee held its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday, after more than a year of intensifying attacks by Republicans, who have accused Mayorkas of being derelict in his duty to secure the US-Mexico border. If Republicans are successful, Mayorkas would be the first cabinet secretary impeached in nearly 150 years.
Thousands of migrants are arriving at the southern US border each day, straining border patrol resources and causing strain to the authorities and services in many cities and towns across the country. The situation is an acute political vulnerability for the president, who has been unable to stem the record number of migrants from across the western hemisphere traveling north to escape violence, political upheaval, poverty and natural disasters.
The inquiry into Mayorkas’s handling of the nation’s borders is being led by the House homeland security committee, as opposed to the House judiciary committee, which typically oversees impeachment proceedings but is focused on the separate impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
Unease among some House Republicans over the effort to impeach Biden despite a failure to uncover any evidence of misconduct has appeared to only strengthen the party’s appetite for charging Mayorkas within the constitutional impeachment criteria that he has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”.
In November, eight House Republicans joined with Democrats to shelve an effort to force a snap impeachment of Mayorkas led by far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Since then, as the problems deepen and polling shows Republicans with a clear advantage on the issue of immigration and border security, some of the Republicans who initially voted against Greene’s resolution now appear open to impeaching the homeland security secretary.
The panel’s chairman, Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, has accused Mayorkas of encouraging illegal immigration through lax enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. Speaking at a news conference during a visit to the southern border earlier this month, Green, joined by a delegation of more than 60 House Republicans, called Mayorkas the “greatest domestic threat to the national security and the safety of the American people”.
Green has indicated that he hopes to move quickly with a few hearings before moving to introduce the articles of impeachment. While support for impeaching Mayorkas appears to be growing among House Republicans, their control of the chamber is so tenuous that a few defections could derail the effort.
If the House impeaches Mayorkas, it is extremely unlikely two-thirds of the Senate, narrowly controlled by Democrats, would vote to convict him.
Wednesday’s hearing, titled Havoc in the Heartland: How Secretary Mayorkas’ Failed Leadership Has Impacted the States, will feature a panel of Republican state attorneys general, including Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma, Austin Knudsen of Montana and Andrew Bailey of Missouri. Mayorkas was not invited to testify.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) slammed the proceedings as a “baseless political attack” and a distraction from the efforts underway on the opposite side of the Capitol to find a policy solution to the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.
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Mayorkas has emerged as a central figure in the bipartisan Senate negotiations over how to respond to the rise in migration at the US border with Mexico. It creates an odd juxtaposition in which House Republicans are trying to impeach an official with whom Senate Republicans are working to try to strike a border security deal.
In a memo released ahead of the hearing, the agency highlighted comments made by Republicans lawmakers and conservative legal scholars who disagreed that Mayorkas had committed impeachable offenses.
And contrary to Republican claims of an “open” border, the DHS memo said that agents had removed or expelled more than 1 million individuals encountered at the border in both fiscal years 2022 and 2023, with more removals in 2022 than any previous year. It estimated that the annual rate of apprehensions under the Biden administration was 78%, “identical” to the rate under the Trump administration.
They also noted increased efforts in stopping the flow of fentanyl, noting that the agency has “stopped more fentanyl and arrested more individuals for fentanyl-related crimes in the last two years than in the previous five years combined”.
“This unprecedented process, led by extremists, is harmful to the Department and its workforce and undercuts vital work across countless national security priorities,” the memo said. “Unlike like those pursuing photo ops and politics, Secretary Mayorkas is working relentlessly to fix the problem by working with Republican and Democratic Senators to find common ground and real solutions.”
