Mayorkas impeachment articles delivered to Senate

WASHINGTON — After two months of delay, House Republicans on Tuesday delivered articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to the Senate, as they demanded a full trial.

Constitutional scholars have called the case against Mayorkas groundless, and the Democrats who control the Senate have made it clear that they want to curtail a lengthy trial in favor of a quick vote to dismiss the charges against him. But Republicans have pushed ahead with the articles, which accuse the secretary of willfully refusing to enforce border laws and breaching the public trust.

“For the last nearly four years, we’ve seen Secretary Mayorkas willfully cede operational control of our border to drug cartels,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday, describing the chaos at the country’s southern border as he urged the Senate to take up the case.

He accused Mayorkas and President Biden of intentionally failing in their responsibilities to secure the border.

“He and Joe Biden engineered this catastrophe,” Johnson said. “They allowed it. They apparently desired it.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the 11 House Republicans named to prosecute the case against Mayorkas made the ceremonial walk across the Capitol to present the charges, which they read aloud on the floor.

The Republican case against Mayorkas does not accuse him of any specific criminal conduct, but rather amounts to an attempt to fire an administration official who is enforcing policies they oppose, and who they argue is failing at his job. That is a far cry from the “high crimes and misdemeanors” laid out in the Constitution as the basis for an impeachment.

A two-thirds majority would be needed to convict him the in Senate, an unachievable threshold given that Democrats are solidly opposed.

For his part, Mayorkas has spent months essentially ignoring the case and continuing to work. He negotiated a border security deal with both Senate Republicans and Democrats that fell apart after former president Trump opposed it.

“Our immigration system, however, is fundamentally broken,” he said. “Only Congress can fix it. Congress has not updated our immigration enforcement laws since 1996 — 28 years ago.”