Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment set for debate in House committee

WASHINGTON — House Republicans will move one step closer on Tuesday to voting to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, over the opposition of Democrats, on charges he has not enforced laws to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.

The House Homeland Security Committee will meet Tuesday morning to debate, consider amendments and vote on the articles that allege Mayorkas committed impeachable offenses on immigration policy and in his interactions with the House.

The House battle over Mayorkas comes as the Senate prepares to unveil a bipartisan measure to tighten the border this week, a deal House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called “dead on arrival” in the House.

The fact that the House has only impeached a presidential Cabinet member once before — it happened about 150 years ago and failed in the Senate — illustrates the current highly political and contentious struggle between Republicans and Democrats over immigration policy.

Long Island’s three Republican congressmen sit on the Homeland Security Committee. Reps. Anthony D’Esposito of Island Park, Nick LaLota of Amityville and Andrew Garbarino of Bayport are expected to vote to approve the articles of impeachment.

On Monday, D’Esposito posted on the social media site X: “Secretary Mayorkas willfully & systemically refused to comply with the law and has breached the public trust. Accountability is coming.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said earlier this month: “My Republican colleagues may disagree with this administration's border policy, and that’s their right. But to use impeachment to settle such differences is unconstitutional.”

The charges

The House Homeland Security Committee will debate and vote on two articles of impeachment: refusal to comply with the law and breach of public trust.

The first article alleges “Mayorkas has repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security.” As a result, it says, “millions of aliens have illegally entered the United States on an annual basis with many unlawfully remaining.”

The second article alleges Mayorkas “has knowingly made false statements, and knowingly obstructed lawful oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, principally to obfuscate the results of his willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”

The GOP case

Republicans say Mayorkas willfully has ignored immigration law, resulting in border security personnel encountering 6.3 million migrants and allowing some 2.4 million migrants into the country, according to Homeland Security Department statistics.

“There's no question that regardless of where you live, or what your background is, that this southern border and the crises at it are costing American lives, and they're causing economic downfalls in cities and states throughout this country,” D’Esposito told Newsday.

“It is very clear from the investigation that we've conducted that Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors by refusing to comply with the laws passed by Congress, and he's clearly breached the public trust,” he said, “and he needs to be held accountable for it.”

The opposition

Democrats say Republicans are trying to impeach Mayorkas in what is a policy dispute, not a “high crime or misdemeanor," as the Constitution requires. Biden has reversed most of the Trump administration’s policies on the border and immigration.

“The consensus from constitutional scholars is clear. Republicans have not made a case for impeachment,” said Thompson, pointing to the view of conservative constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School.

“There is also no current evidence that he is corrupt or committed an impeachable offense,” Turley wrote in The Daily Beast, adding that “it is precisely the temptation that the Framers thought they had avoided by rejecting standards like maladministration.”

The process

Republicans are girding for a long-drawn battle in Tuesday’s committee hearing with Democrats, whom they expect to delay the final vote on the impeachment articles with amendments and parliamentary maneuvers.

If the committee approves the articles, as expected, Johnson has indicated he intends to bring them to the House floor for a required majority vote.

If that vote is successful, the Senate would hold a trial and it would take two-thirds of senators to vote to impeach and remove Mayorkas from office.

The Senate has never voted to impeach a president or a Cabinet member. Democrats say impeachment of Mayorkas will fail in the Senate.