© Getty(L) Illegal migrants cross into the U.S.
(R) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
(R) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
The House Homeland Security Committee will take up articles of impeachment for Willful and Systemic Refusal to Comply with the Law and Breach of the Public Trust against Mayorkas, according to the committee.
"These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' impeachment," said House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) in a statement. "He has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. He has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department.
© Drew Angerer / Gettyimages.ruRep. Mark Green at the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington, U.S., Feb. 28, 2023.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told colleagues in a letter Friday that the chamber will move "as soon as possible" to impeach Mayorkas, who has served in his position since February 2021.
"When we return next week, by necessity, the House Homeland Security Committee will move forward with Articles of Impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas," Johnson wrote. "A vote on the floor will be held as soon as possible thereafter."
On Tuesday at 10 a.m. local time, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a meeting to mark up and potentially amend the two articles of impeachment. The committee is expected to pass the articles, which would then be sent to the House floor for a vote.
Mayorkas and the Biden administration have created several programs that parole immigrants who do not meet legal admission standards into the country. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been admitted, according to the committee.
Johnson accused Mayorkas of having "willfully ignored and actively undermined our nation's immigration laws" by allowing the crisis at the border to stretch now into its fourth year.
Committee Republicans have held more than 15 border-related hearings since 2023, when the GOP retook control of the House. Five of the hearings held last year focused specifically on investigating whether Mayorkas was derelict in his duties as leader of the 260,000-person department.
The five investigative hearings examined how Mayorkas's actions had "emboldened cartels," the human cost in terms of people killed as a result of illegal immigration and drug smuggling, the fiscal cost, and waste and abuse in the government's response.
"After our nearly year-long investigation and subsequent impeachment proceedings, and having exhausted all other options to hold him accountable, it is unmistakably clear to all of us — and to the American people — that Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and impeach Secretary Mayorkas," the committee said a statement last week. "The Secretary has consistently willfully and systemically refused to follow the laws passed by Congress, abused his authority, and breached the trust of Congress and the American people on numerous occasions."
Once on the House floor, the House can adopt the articles by a simple majority vote and immediately impeach Mayorkas. The charges would be sent over to the Democratic-controlled Senate for a trial where a two-thirds vote is needed for conviction.
Democrats went on the offensive Friday, getting ahead of the forthcoming drama.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a briefing that Republicans impeachment inquiry was "shameful."
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee sent Green a letter Friday that accused Republicans of ignoring past precedent and due process in their impeachment inquiry on five levels.
"This impeachment inquiry was not authorized by the full House. Secretary Mayorkas was not afforded any rights in the absence of an authorized impeachment inquiry," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the top Democrat on the committee. "Secretary Mayorkas was not afforded the opportunity to testify before the Committee despite his willingness to do so."
The DHS issued a memo Sunday morning that called the markup proceeding "more of the same political games" from the committee's Republican members.
"They don't want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it," department officials said in the statement. "That's why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas."
The department maintained that Republicans' articles are not "legitimate Constitutional grounds for impeachment" and noted that it had seized more fentanyl, arrested more immigrants, and removed more illegal immigrants than any other administration — evidence of its success in carrying out its national security mission.
They gonna wait until Oct to start this shit with Bribem?