Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas vigorously defended his record Tuesday as Republicans moved forward with the process of impeaching him - which, if successful, would be the first such action against a Cabinet member in almost 150 years.
The House Committee on Homeland Security convened Tuesday morning to mark up articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, despite struggling in two recent hearings on the inquiry to detail clear evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.
In a six-page letter sent Tuesday to Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Mayorkas detailed his lengthy career and pushed back on the GOP’s accusations that he has avoided their oversight requests.
“We have provided Congress and your Committee hours of testimony, thousands of documents, hundreds of briefings, and much more information that demonstrates quite clearly how we are enforcing the law,” Mayorkas wrote.
His responsiveness to the House’s oversight requests would not waver, however “baseless” the proceedings, he added.
“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service to which I remain devoted,” Mayorkas wrote.
House Republicans announced two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas on Sunday, accusing him of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and breach of the public trust.
The charges come as Republicans swiftly concluded two public impeachment hearings this month without Mayorkas’s in-person testimony or testimony from any fact witnesses. In the first article of impeachment, Republicans argue that Mayorkas has failed to enforce U.S. immigration policies at the nation’s border, has disregarded laws passed by Congress and has ignored court orders, allowing for a surge of migration at the southern border that has resulted in record highs of illegal crossings in recent months.
“Secretary Mayorkas has put his political preferences above following the law,” Green said in his opening remarks Tuesday. He later described the letter Mayorkas had sent him Tuesday morning as “inadequate and unbecoming of a Cabinet secretary.”
The second charge, breach of the public trust, accuses Mayorkas of making false statements and obstructing oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. After little public action in the probe for several months, the Homeland Security Committee’s investigation came to a head this month after Green invited Mayorkas to testify at the committee’s second impeachment hearing.
Mayorkas responded that he had a scheduling conflict and offered to testify on another date, but Green declined the offer and moved forward with the hearing. It was held on a day Mayorkas was preparing to host a delegation of Mexican officials to discuss migration issues at the U.S.-Mexico border and also was spotted on the other side of the Capitol, negotiating with the Senate on a border security deal.
Shortly thereafter, Green issued a letter outlining 31 requests to the department that remained “partially or entirely unsatisfied,” signaling an obstruction charge to come.
Homeland Security officials have noted that Mayorkas has already testified before Congress more than any other Cabinet member - 27 times in 35 months - and that the department has provided 90 witnesses for committee hearings since the start of the Biden administration, along with more than 13,000 pages of documents and data in response to Green’s requests alone.
Even if the House impeaches Mayorkas, he is unlikely to be convicted in a trial in the Senate.
Green told reporters Tuesday that it didn’t matter if the Senate ultimately did not convict Mayorkas.
“I’m doing what is, I think, my duty and votes will be what votes are. I feel pretty good,” Green said. “The same question gets asked. … ‘Are you just doing something that’s going to wind up being fruitless anyway because of the Senate?’ Well, fine, if that’s what they choose to do, but I have a duty to do.”
Mayorkas appeared before the committee in November. But threats to impeach him have loomed since House Republicans assumed the majority, serving as a rallying cry for hard-line lawmakers such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has made repeated efforts to force an impeachment vote.
Constitutional experts and Democrats have argued that Republicans are abusing a tool adopted by the framers of the Constitution to protect the country from despotic leadership to instead address a policy dispute. Two law professors who testified before the committee this month both stated that they did not see a constitutional basis for impeachment.
“Policy differences are not impeachable,” said ranking Democrat Bennie G. Thompson (Miss.) in his opening statement Tuesday, before repeating the sentiment from a constitutional scholar who testified before the committee this month and argued that no other branch of government has more power to address the crisis at the border than Congress.
In remarks during the committee hearing Tuesday, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) noted the irony of Republicans trying to impeach Mayorkas for neglecting his duties while the secretary had been for two months actively negotiating with a bipartisan group of senators on border security legislation.
Goldman was referring to a bipartisan Senate deal that would tie funding for Ukraine to border policy changes pushed by Republicans. After former president Donald Trump voiced opposition to the package, however, several House and Senate Republicans have said they would not support the measure.
Trump, who is running for reelection and who decisively won the GOP’s first two nominating contests this month, blasted the would-be bipartisan deal as a potential political “gift” to Democrats during an election year. He also bragged about inserting himself into the debate and stymieing efforts to get the bill passed, even though he is not in office.
“The real reason we are here, as we all know, is because Donald Trump wants to run on immigration as his number one issue in the November 2024 election - and you don’t have to take my word for it because he said it himself,” Goldman said Tuesday.
