The House of Representatives impeached Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on February 13, 2024. This makes Mayorkas the second Cabinet secretary in United States history to be impeached. He was accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement.” With these strong accusations thrown at him, it is crucial to consider if they are all true.
According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives has the power to impeach a government official; the Senate is the court of trials that determines whether or not impeachment claims are true. The House can vote an official out of office and remove their rights to future office if the Senate finds claims to be valid.
President Biden swore Alejandro Mayorkas in as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on February 2, 2021. He is a Cuban refugee, making him the first Latino immigrant to serve in his position. As head of the DHS, he is in charge of all attempts to support national and economic security, counter-terrorism, build national strength towards disasters, strengthen security, maintain cyberspace security, protect American borders, administer immigration laws, and manage trade and travel.
The House of Representatives contends Mayorkas, according to House Resolution 582, “…violated, and continues to violate, this requirement by failing to maintain operational control of the border and releasing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the interior of the United States.” The House claims that Mayorkas practiced “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and created a “breach of public trust.” In support of such claims, encounters with immigrants reached an all-time high along the southwest border of 302,000 in December of 2023.
In opposition to the impeachment and its claims, the White House and several other Democratic officials have voiced their opinion. The White House stated that the U.S. government has been trying to get additional funding to help Mayorkas protect the borders. However, the Republicans refused to approve funding for border protection, making it difficult for Mayorkas to do his job. The Republicans’ failure to support additional funding goes against their platform of having stronger borders and limiting immigration. House Republicans argued that Mayorkas’ misdemeanors lie in his handling of the southern border, but several constitutional experts have stated that evidence does not reach such a conclusion. “If House Republicans are serious about border security, they should abandon these political games, and instead support the bipartisan national security agreement in the Senate to get DHS the enforcement resources we need,” said DHS spokesperson, Mia Ehrenberg.
In response to the accusations, Mayorkas responded with a seven-page letter. “You claim that we have failed to enforce our immigration laws. That is false. We have provided Congress and your committee hours of testimony, thousands of documents, hundreds of briefings, and much more information that demonstrates quite clearly how we are enforcing the law,” Mayorkas wrote. He also pointed out that 500,000 asylum seekers were removed from the country after Title 42 was lifted. Mayorkas mentioned that in the three years Biden has served so far, he has removed more immigrants than Donald Trump did in the entirety of his presidency.
The initial vote occurred on February 6, 2024. The Republican-dominated House of Representatives has 219 members. In a final vote of 214-216, the impeachment failed. Four Republicans decided to side with the Democrats. The vote was at a tie of 215-215 for a brief moment before one Republican decided to vote against the impeachment and before another Democratic representative entered the chamber late.
The second attempt to impeach Mayorkas occurred on February 13. By a vote of 214-213, the House of Representatives impeached Mayorkas. This made Mayorkas the second Cabinet secretary to ever be impeached besides William W. Belknap in 1876. Two Democrats were not present for the vote. The Senate is aiming to reject the impeachment charges in a fast-paced trial in the hopes of avoiding the impeachment from becoming a political spectacle.
Very little evidence proves the point of the resolution, while heaps of evidence can easily substantiate Mayorkas’ lack of wrongdoing. With such baseless reasoning, it makes you wonder if this impeachment could have different motives than stated.
