The House Homeland Security Committee approved two articles of impeachment Wednesday after midnight against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The House has now sent the vote to impeach Mayorkas to the house floor amid the worsening border crisis, Axios reported. Mayorkas would be the first Cabinet member to be impeached since 1876 if the historic vote succeeds. The articles, which were released Sunday, passed out of committee along party lines.
Alejandro Mayorkas is defending himself from Republicans in a sweeping letter sent hours before the House Homeland Security Committee considers historic articles of impeachment against him.https://t.co/MvLXjyg9qG
— Axios (@axios) January 30, 2024
The first article of impeachment against Mayorkas accuses him of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” referring to the record levels of illegal border crossings and migrants released into the country. The second article accuses Mayorkas of “breach of the public trust,” according to a copy obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The committee believes Mayorkas perpetuated the border crisis by directing his agency to limit immigration enforcement via a September 2021 memo.
Mayorkas was accused of lying to Congress in the second article when he said that the southern border was “secure” and that DHS has “operational control” of the area. He also supported the false claim accusing Border Patrol agents of “whipping” illegal migrants in September 2021, which a federal investigation disproved.
Republican attorneys general, legal experts and mothers who’ve lost their kids to fentanyl and an MS-13 gang member testified in January to the Homeland Security Committee during two hearings on impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas. (RELATED: Turley Explains Why He Thinks Republicans Won’t Be Able To Impeach Mayorkas)
There were over 2.3 million encounters of migrants crossing the southern border illegally in fiscal year 2022 and more than 2.4 million in fiscal year 2023, according to federal data recorded by Border Patrol.