The House voted Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for mismanagement of the border, making him the first-ever sitting Cabinet secretary to be stained with impeachment.
Republicans said they felt compelled to act amid the unprecedented chaos in the country’s immigration system, where the latest data shows the U.S. is adding more than 2 million unauthorized immigrants a year to its population, most of them jumping the southern border.
“Alejandro Mayorkas deserves to be impeached, and Congress has a constitutional obligation to do so,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican.
“Next to a declaration of war, impeachment is arguably the most serious authority given to the House, and we have treated this matter accordingly. Since this Secretary refuses to do the job that the Senate confirmed him to do, the House must act,” he said.
The vote was 214-213, with three Republicans siding with Democrats in opposition.
The case now goes to the Senate, which will take up the matter after senators return from a two-week recess. The plan calls for House lawmakers to present the articles of impeachment one day and then to have senators sworn in as jurors for the trial the next day.
President Biden immediately lashed out at Republicans with a statement saying “history” will judge them poorly for a “blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant.”
Mr. Biden said Mr. Mayorkas has “upheld the rule of law faithfully.”
Republicans vehemently disagreed. They said the secretary breached one law after another during his three years in office by subverting the immigration system. They said he took a relatively secure border under President Trump and turned it into the most chaotic border in American history.
The two articles of impeachment accuse Mr. Mayorkas of “willfully” subverting the immigration system and breaching trust by lying to Congress and the public.
Republicans said the secretary has defied court rulings, manufactured immigration law, and ordered agents and officers not to follow laws written by Congress, all with the result of creating a catch-and-release whirlwind that has drawn millions to attempt illegal immigration each year.
“With today’s vote, Congress has taken decisive action to defend our constitutional order and hold accountable a public official who has violated his oath of office,” said Rep. Mark Green, Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, which led the impeachment effort.
The vote Tuesday was the third try for impeachment.
An early attempt that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, forced in November fell shy after eight Republicans sided with Democrats in opposition.
It did kindle official impeachment proceedings, which led to two hearings and an impeachment resolution that emerged from the Homeland Security Committee.
That resolution failed in a floor vote last week after three Republicans sided with Democrats and one Republican was absent.
This time, Republicans made sure they had enough votes to succeed.
The three Republicans who sided with Democrats on both recent votes were Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California.
They said they didn’t believe Mr. Mayorkas had breached the Constitution’s impeachment standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Mr. McClintock said the Republicans were using the same logic as Democrats in their impeachments of President Trump by pursuing a case with no underlying crime.
“We must never allow the left to become our teachers, for theirs is a world of situational ethics and fluid law, toxic to a constitutional republic founded on the rule of law,” he said in a lengthy memo last week explaining his decision.
Mr. Buck and Mr. Gallagher are not seeking reelection.
The vote marks the first impeachment since Mr. Trump’s two impeachments, one in 2019 while in office and the other in 2021 after he left.
Both resulted in acquittals by the Senate.
No sitting Cabinet secretary has been impeached, though the House did impeach one, Grant administration War Secretary William Belknap, just after he resigned in 1876. Belknap would go on to be acquitted by the Senate, with some senators saying he was out of office and beyond their reach.
Mr. Mayorkas has made clear he will not resign and has called the impeachment proceedings as an unneeded distraction from his duties.
“Without a shred of evidence or legitimate Constitutional grounds, and despite bipartisan opposition, House Republicans have falsely smeared a dedicated public servant who has spent more than 20 years enforcing our laws and serving our country,” said Mia Ehrenberg, Mr. Mayorkas’ spokesperson.
She said the impeachment vote was particularly galling since Mr. Mayorkas was just involved in bipartisan negotiations on a border security bill.
That proposal was defeated in a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate last week.
Congressional Democrats, in addition to defending Mr. Mayorkas, said Republicans trampled on the secretary’s rights in rushing to impeachment. They said the process should have gone through the Judiciary Committee and that Mr. Mayorkas should have been given a chance to challenge evidence against him.
Immigrant rights groups said the impeachment grew out of “White nationalist and antisemitic conspiracies.”
“We can disagree about the politics and policy of immigration and the border, but we must draw the line when the rhetoric is inspiring hateful violence,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice.
Mr. Mayorkas is Jewish and a Cuban immigrant.
The Homeland Security Department released new border numbers just hours before Tuesday’s vote.
The numbers indicated the chaos at the border eased in January, with Border Patrol arrests cut in half compared with December’s record-shattering month.
It was the fastest the department released monthly border numbers in years, leading some analysts to see it as an attempt to give Democrats ammunition to defend Mr. Mayorkas.
Even so, January’s Border Patrol arrest rate was four times that of January 2020, the last full January under the Trump administration.
Republicans say those sorts of comparisons are proof that Mr. Mayorkas has intentionally broken security on the U.S. border.
Ms. Greene, the driving force behind Mayorkas’ impeachment, told reporters that she wants the Senate to act.
“We did exactly what we should be doing. Now it’s up to the Senate to do their job,” she said.
Mr. Mayorkas had long been considered the easiest impeachment target for House Republicans. Now they turn their attention to Mr. Biden, who also faces an impeachment inquiry based on his son Hunter’s business dealings.
House Republicans said Mr. Biden conspired with his son on business deals with foreign interests and then lied about it to the public. The White House has insisted Mr. Biden was not part of his son’s dealings, though earlier claims that Hunter Biden didn’t benefit from his father’s famous name have been discredited.