Jan. 30 (UPI) — The House Homeland Security committee will hold a markup session Tuesday to finalize two articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The special committee session will convene at 10 a.m. EST, at which time Chairman Mark E. Green, R-Tenn., will present amendments to House Resolution 863, before a vote is taken to move the impeachment articles to the full House for consideration.
The 20-page resolution includes two counts that accuse Mayorkas of “high crimes and misdemeanors” for his alleged failure to enforce federal immigration laws, leading to the current crisis at the Southern U.S. border.
The first impeachment article charges Mayorkas with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and the second article alleges Mayorkas “breached the public trust” by making “false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight.”
The committee initiated the impeachment proceedings on Jan. 10 following a yearlong investigation into Mayorkas’ policy initiatives to contain the border.
In bringing the charges, Rep. Green cited 8.1 million encounters at U.S. borders, including 6.7 million at the U.S.-Mexico border, constituting “gross incompetence,” which Green called sufficient grounds for impeachment.
“Secretary Mayorkas has brazenly refused to enforce the laws passed by Congress and has enacted policies that knowingly make our country less safe,” Green said at the time. “What we’re seeing here is a willful violation of the oath of office taken by Secretary Mayorkas. Let me repeat that, ‘a willful violation.'”
On Jan. 18, the committee held a second hearing in which witnesses who live near the Southern border testified about the impact of gangs, drugs and crime spilling into their communities.
Later, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he wanted to bring the articles to the House floor “as soon as possible,” while Green vowed to present a “clear, compelling, and irrefutable case” to impeach Mayorkas.
Democrats, meanwhile, dispute the claims and continue to defend Mayorkas, while accusing Republicans of abuse of power.
“What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real charge or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors — the Constitutional standard for impeachment,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the committee said in a statement.
“That should come as no surprise because Republicans’ so-called ‘investigation’ of Secretary Mayorkas has been a remarkably fact-free affair.”
Previously, the White House said efforts to impeach Mayorkas were unconstitutional while calling for bipartisan legislation in Congress to fix the immigration problem.
Republicans, however, were seeking to drill down on immigration as a key policy issue in 2024 that could help the GOP build momentum against President Joe Biden in the months leading up to the November ballot.
Mayorkas would become the second cabinet member in history to face impeachment charges in the House.
In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap, who served under President Ulysses S. Grant, was impeached in the House but later acquitted during the Senate trial.
