Mayorkas first sitting cabinet member to face impeachment
homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has become the first cabinet member to face impeachment in nearly 150 years after the Republican House of Representatives blamed him for an increase in migrants at the Mexican border.
President Joe Biden criticised “petty political games” after Mr Mayorkas was impeached by the House in a 214-213 vote. However, it seems likely that it will not be passed in the Senate.
The Republican majority, who secured a single-vote win after leader Steve Scalise returned from cancer treatment, is determined to punish Mr Biden’s administration over its handling of the Mexico border.
Mr Biden said: “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honourable public servant in order to play petty political games.”
Mr Mayorkas faced two articles of impeachment filed by the homeland security committee, arguing he “wilfully and systematically” refused to enforce existing immigration laws and that he breached the public trust by lying to Congress and saying the border was secure.
Unlike other impeachment attempts against politicians in the past, this one did not specify a specific offence and instead was more general, focusing on Republicans’ disapproval of the migration system.
Critics of the impeachment effort said the charges against Mr Mayorkas amount to a policy dispute over Mr Biden’s border policy and did not reach the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours”, the standard for impeachment laid out in the Constitution.
The House had initially launched an impeachment inquiry into the president over his son’s business dealings, but turned its attention to Mr Mayorkas after former president Donald Trump’s ally Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed the debate forward.
The charges against Mr MAYUS orkas would next go to the Senate for a trial. But neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the matter and it may be indefinitely shelved to a committee.
Border security has shot to the top of campaign issues with Mr Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he retakes the White House.
“We have no choice,” Mr Trump said in stark language at a weekend rally in South Carolina.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package, but has been unable to advance Republicans’ own proposal, which is a non-starter in the Senate.
Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached. It was nearly 150 years ago the House voted to impeach president Ulysses S Grant’s secretary of war William Belknap over a kickback scheme in government contracts but he had already resigned before the vote to impeach him.
History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant partisanship Joe Biden