Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas may be the first Cabinet official to be impeached since 1876 as the House moves forward with proceedings against him.
The House Homeland Security Committee is scheduled to mark up two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas on Tuesday.
In the days leading up to the markup, Republicans and Democrats have spent their time crafting their defenses, or condemnations, of the proceedings against the three-year Department of Homeland Security secretary over his handling of the southern border. Members are expected to vote in line with their party.
The House Homeland Security Committee’s 33 members will gather on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to begin what could be an all-day — even overnight — markup of two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.
The articles, which were released Sunday morning, accused Mayorkas of willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law and breach of the public trust. The articles are expected to be passed on to the House Rules Committee before getting a full House vote if GOP homeland lawmakers are successful Tuesday.
A committee source close to the proceedings who was authorized to speak with reporters said on Monday afternoon that Republicans do not expect a floor vote until next week.
Meanwhile, Democrats are blaming two House Republicans in particular for moving the issue to the top of the House GOP’s agenda despite having “no evidence.”
“House Republicans have produced no evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed an impeachable offense,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said during a press conference at the Capitol. “House Republicans have produced no evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has violated the Constitution. House Republicans have produced no evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has broken the law.
“This is a political stunt and a hit job ordered by two people: Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Jeffries said. “The House Republicans have clearly turned their ever-shrinking majority over to the extremists.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the top Democrat on the committee, said he was concerned about the impeachment’s potential to “confuse the public” into believing “something is going wrong” at the department.
Democrats have argued that Republicans’ issue with Mayorkas was merely over policy differences, which did not merit an actual offense.
“Our secretary works at the direction of the president,” said Thompson. “He carries them out. So this notion that in carrying out the direction of your boss somehow is an impeachable offense is wrong.”
Now: Top House Homeland Dem Bennie Thompson makes statement on eve of committee’s Mayorkas impeachment mark-up
“Our chairman has said at a fundraiser that he would basically encourage people to get popcorn and coke out because impeachment is coming. That’s not the standard for… pic.twitter.com/79muIUFcPe
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) January 29, 2024
In a 29-page report that committee Democrats released Monday afternoon, lawmakers slammed Republicans for botching the legal process leading up to impeachment and defended Mayorkas’s job performance over the past 36 months.
Republicans have argued that Mayorkas’s removal from office is justified on the basis that he had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Democrats pushed back against that claim last week, prompting Republicans to explain their argument Monday.
“The word misdemeanor today seems to connote some sort of misdemeanor crime. But at the time of the founding, there was no federal criminal law,” said a committee source close to the proceedings. “Misdemeanor meant to demean yourself poorly. … A high misdemeanor is when you’re a high executive official who is really demeaning yourself poorly.”
Republicans’ impeachment argument maintains that Mayorkas created parole programs that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants being released into the United States, separate from immigrants who cross the southern border illegally and are let into the country.
Democrats have pushed back at House Republicans for not working with them over the past year on comprehensive immigration reform, only moving a conservative border security bill through the House in that time.
Republicans defended their inaction Monday and said working to change immigration laws would not change the crisis at the border because Mayorkas has subverted federal immigration laws and any new ones passed could also be ignored if he so chose.
“If you’ve got a rogue secretary who’s not following the current law as written, what confidence would any member have in voting for carefully negotiated language that might come out of the Senate or anywhere else when that same statute, if enacted into law, would have to be enforced by a secretary who is already not following the law as written?” the committee official said. “It’s a huge detriment to the legislative process to allow a secretary to continue in an effort to intentionally create programs to violate current law.”
Republicans retook the House one year ago but waited until the start of an election year to attempt to strip the former Obama DHS deputy secretary of his title.
Since Biden took office and Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate in January 2021, a record-high 7 million immigrants have been encountered attempting to enter the U.S. without authorization.