The House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday accredited, down get together strains, two articles of impeachment towards Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — teeing up a ground vote as early as subsequent week to question the embattled Biden official.
The committee voted down get together strains to approve the 2 impeachment articles, which accuse Mayorkas of getting “repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security” and of getting “made false statements to Congress” that the border is safe and closed and that DHS is in operational management of the border. The articles will now go to the Home the place they are going to be voted on on the Home ground.
The vote got here after a prolonged, and at occasions, fiery listening to wherein Republicans outlined their case for why Mayorkas ought to be faraway from workplace for allegedly mishandling the disaster on the southern border and Democrats accused Republicans of debasing the impeachment course of for political functions.
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“Today is a grave day,” Chairman Mark Inexperienced stated. “We have not approached this day or this process lightly. Secretary Mayorkas’s actions have forced our hand. We cannot allow this border crisis to continue.”
U.S. Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press convention at a U.S. Border Patrol station on January 08, 2024 in Eagle Go, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Photographs)
Republicans spent the listening to emphasizing their case towards Mayorkas, pointing to file excessive border crossings, with the file for month-to-month crossings having been damaged in December, and mass releases of migrants into the inside together with narrowed inside enforcement. They accuse Mayorkas of not following immigration legislation, which they are saying calls for the detention of unlawful immigrants, and of failing to safe the border.
“My colleagues across the aisle, seem to say that it’s acceptable that we’ve had 10 million illegal crossings in three years and we’ve had pushing 300,000 Americans dead from opioid overdose. We’re losing our country down there. And the man responsible for executing that policy is Alejandro Mayorkas,” Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., stated.
Democrats pushed again, first making an attempt to adjourn the markup after which ripping into Republicans for the proceedings, accusing them of working a “sham” impeachment and of attempting to question Mayorkas primarily based purely on political motivations and coverage disputes, and of interfering with Mayorkas’ efforts to resolve the continuing disaster.
“The extreme MAGA Republicans who are running the House of Representatives are deeply unserious people. They don’t want progress. They don’t want solutions,” Rating Member Bennie Thompson stated. “They want a political issue. And most of all, they want to please their disgraced former president.”
Chairman Mark Inexperienced, R-Tenn., heart, joined by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the rating member, leads the Home Homeland Safety Committee transfer to question Secretary of Homeland Safety Alejandro Mayorkas over the disaster on the U.S.-Mexico border, on the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. ((AP Picture/J. Scott Applewhite))
“You do not have a right to demean this institution, to bastardize the impeachment clause of the Constitution, to belittle the standard of constitutional impeachment to such a degree that you can’t even produce a legal memo in support of your articles of impeachment that do not exist in history and do not exist in the law,” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-NY., stated.
The listening to comes after a bitter months-long argument over the method. Inexperienced’s committee started investigating Mayorkas final 12 months and Home impeachment articles had been referred to the committee in November. The committee held two impeachment hearings earlier this month. Mayorkas didn’t testify, regardless of expressing willingness to testify — a topic of finger-pointing between the 2 sides over who was accountable. However on Tuesday he sent a lengthy letter slamming the proceedings and defending his file in workplace.
“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” Mayorkas stated.
The Biden administration has repeatedly stated the disaster on the border has not been brought on by coverage, however is as an alternative a Hemisphere-wide disaster mixed with a “broken” immigration system that wants reform and complete immigration reform. In his letter, Mayorkas declared that “problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new.”
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“Our immigration laws last received an overhaul in 1996. Our immigration laws were simply not built for 21st century migration patterns,” Mayorkas stated.
He pointed to statistical data together with half 1,000,000 removals since Could, and day by day removals practically double what they had been in comparison with from 2014-2019. He additionally says that the apprehension fee has been 78%, the identical because the prior administration, and there was a major enhance in removing flights inside the Western Hemisphere.
He additionally factors to elevated Border Patrol hiring, an anti-smuggling marketing campaign and an intensified anti-fentanyl effort that has seen extra seizures of the lethal drug.
“As an alternative you declare that we’ve got didn’t implement our immigration laws. That’s false,” he stated.
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He additionally pushed again on the criticism his division has confronted over an alleged lack of responsiveness to oversight queries from Congress, claiming as an alternative that he has been aware of Congress with testimony, witnesses and paperwork.
“The allegations are baseless and inaccurate,” he stated.
If the Home votes to question Mayorkas, then the case will go to the Senate for a trial.
Fox Information’ Tyler Olson, Elizabeth Elkind and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
