House impeaches Mayorkas; Senate action unlikely
Frustration over border leads to 214-213 vote
WASHINGTON — The US House voted Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with the Republican majority determined to punish the Biden administration over its handling of the US-Mexico border after failing last week in a politically embarrassing setback.
The evening roll call proved tight, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare GOP majority unable to handle many defectors or absences in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the first Cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years.
In a historic rebuke, the House impeached Mayorkas 214-213. With the return of majority leader Steve Scalise to bolster the GOP’s numbers after being away from Washington for cancer care and a Northeastern storm impacting some others, Republicans recouped — despite dissent from their own ranks.
President Biden called it a “blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.”
The charges against Mayorkas 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.
In a frantic scene of vote-tallying on the House floor, the GOP effort to impeach Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border took on an air of political desperation as Republicans struggle to make good on their priorities.
Mayorkas faced two articles of impeachment filed by the Homeland Security Committee arguing that he “willfully 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.
But critics of the impeachment effort said the charges against Mayorkas amount to a policy dispute over Biden’s border policy, hardly rising to the Constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The House had initially launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s business dealings, but instead turned its attention to Mayorkas after Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former president Donald Trump, pushed the debate forward following the panel’s months-long investigation.
Greene, who will serve as an impeachment manager in a potential Senate trial, hugged Scalise afterward and posed for photos with other lawmakers.
She said senators “better pay attention to the American people and how they feel and then they need to read our articles of impeachment.”
Border security has shot to the top of campaign issues, with Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he retakes the White House.
Various House Republicans have prepared legislation to begin deporting migrants who were temporarily allowed into the United States under the Biden administration’s policies, many as they await adjudication of asylum claims.
At the same time, Johnson rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package but has been unable to advance Republicans’ own proposal, which is a nonstarter in the Senate.
Three Republican representatives who broke ranks last week over the Mayorkas impeachment — Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, and Tom McClintock of California — all did so again Tuesday. With a 219-212 majority, Johnson had few votes to spare.
Several leading conservative scholars along with former Homeland Secretary secretaries from both Republican and Democratic administrations have dismissed the Mayorkas impeachment as unwarranted or a waste of time.
Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland said what the Republicans “have succeeded in doing is degrading and tarnishing the constitutional meaning of impeachment.”
Mayorkas is not the only Biden administration official the House Republicans want to impeach. They have filed legislation to impeach a long list including Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS
The homeland security official is the only sitting Cabinet secretary to be impeached.