WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Republican-led House took another step toward impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his inept handling of the border crisis early on Wednesday in the face of enormous opposition by Democrats and the Biden administration.
While voting along party lines, members of the Homeland Security Committee advanced two articles of impeachment. One article claims Mayorkas has “willfully and systemically refused to comply with Federal immigration laws,” and the other alleges the secretary “breached the public trust” by making false statements, “knowingly” obstructed lawful oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, and made false statements to Congress, the Daily Wire reported.
Democrats employed delay tactics with proposed amendments that Republicans deemed to be political stunts and unrelated to the impeachable offenses. As a result, it took GOP leadership 15 hours to advance the articles out of committee with a party-line vote of 18-15 at approximately 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday.
“I am proud of the Committee for advancing these historic articles,” Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) said in a statement. “I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the right thing, put aside the politics, and agree that before we can fix Secretary Mayorkas’ mess, Congress must finally hold this man accountable.”
Swing-district Republicans fall in line behind push to impeach Secretary Mayorkas. Some yet to say where they'll come down, but House GOP whipping members to back Mayorkas' impeachment as they push for a floor vote as soon as next week pic.twitter.com/HZCfZeVzgE
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 30, 2024
A debate is expected to take place on the House floor as early as next week before the body votes on the articles of impeachment.
If the House adopts the articles by a simple majority vote, Mayorkas will be impeached.
However, the effort to convict the DHS secretary with a two-thirds vote before the Democrat-controlled Senate is a long shot, despite some recent crossover ambition to shake up the status quo.
Earlier this month, 14 House Democrats broke ranks and joined with most Republicans in voting to denounce the Biden administration’s “open-borders policies.”
