After two months of delay, Home Republicans on Tuesday delivered articles of impeachment towards Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland safety secretary, to the Senate, as they demanded a full trial.
Constitutional students have called the case against Mr. Mayorkas groundless, and the Democrats who management the Senate have made it clear that they wish to curtail a prolonged trial in favor of a fast vote to dismiss the fees towards him. However Republicans have pushed forward with the articles, which accuse the secretary of willfully refusing to implement border legal guidelines and breaching the general public belief.
“For the last nearly four years, we’ve seen Secretary Mayorkas willfully cede operational control of our border to drug cartels,” Speaker Mike Johnson mentioned on Tuesday, describing the chaos on the nation’s southern border as he urged the Senate to take up the case.
“We’ve seen exploding numbers of terrorists being encountered at the border,” he added. “We’ve seen gang members and people with criminal backgrounds be released into our country. We’ve seen fentanyl flood over the border.”
He accused Mr. Mayorkas and President Biden of deliberately failing of their duties to safe the border.
“He and Joe Biden engineered this catastrophe,” Mr. Johnson mentioned. “They allowed it. They apparently desired it.”
On Tuesday afternoon, the 11 Home Republicans named to prosecute the case towards Mr. Mayorkas made the ceremonial stroll throughout the Capitol to current the fees, which they learn aloud on the ground.
The Republican case towards Mr. Mayorkas doesn’t accuse him of any particular felony conduct, however moderately quantities to an try to fireside an administration official who’s imposing insurance policies they oppose, and who they argue is failing at his job. That could be a far cry from the “high crimes and misdemeanors” specified by the Structure as the premise for an impeachment.
A two-thirds majority could be wanted to convict him within the Senate, an unachievable threshold provided that Democrats are solidly opposed.
Senate Democrats and even some Republicans have expressed deep skepticism concerning the case and are more likely to transfer to dismiss the matter with out a drawn-out trial.
“Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the bulk chief, mentioned Tuesday. “Talk about awful precedents. This would set an awful precedent for Congress. Every time there’s a policy disagreement in the House, they send it over here and tie the Senate in knots to do an impeachment trial? That’s absurd. That’s an abuse of the process. That is more chaos.”
For his half, Mr. Mayorkas has spent months basically ignoring the case and persevering with to work. He negotiated a border safety cope with each Senate Republicans and Democrats that fell apart after former President Donald J. Trump opposed it.
“When I say that I am not focused on the impeachment proceedings, I actually mean it,” Mr. Mayorkas mentioned in an interview. “I will say this, that it is my hope that my time is not taken away from my work.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Mayorkas started his day on Capitol Hill speaking about his company’s funds request and calling on Congress to offer the division with extra sources to implement border legal guidelines, rent extra personnel and cross the laws he negotiated.
He mentioned that previously 11 months, his company has returned or eliminated greater than 630,000 folks from the nation who didn’t have a authorized foundation to remain.
“Our immigration system, however, is fundamentally broken,” he mentioned. “Only Congress can fix it. Congress has not updated our immigration enforcement laws since 1996 — 28 years ago.”
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the highest Republican within the Senate, slammed Mr. Schumer’s plans to dismiss the case.
“Never before has the Senate agreed to a motion to table articles of impeachment,” Mr. McConnell mentioned. “Not for an officer of either party. Not once.”
He added that “it would be beneath the Senate’s dignity to shrug off our clear responsibility and fail to give the charges we’ll hear today the thorough consideration they deserve.”
Mr. McConnell didn’t point out that he voted in favor of an unsuccessful effort in 2021 to dismiss a second impeachment case towards Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol earlier than the Senate held a trial.
Among the many Republicans Mr. Johnson appointed as impeachment managers are Representatives Mark E. Inexperienced of Tennessee, the Homeland Safety Committee chairman, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who pushed the convention to question Mr. Mayorkas.
Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the Division of Homeland Safety, blasted the impeachment effort.
“Despite warnings from fellow Republicans that this baseless impeachment effort ‘distorts the Constitution,’ House Republicans continue to ignore the facts and undermine the Constitution by wasting even more time on this sham impeachment in the Senate,” she mentioned in a press release.
