Rep. Ashley Hinson, facing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a committee hearing last year, checked off a list of border failures: criminal immigrants surging into the U.S., rising assaults on Border Patrol agents, record-shattering migrant deaths and children being trafficked across the boundary.
“What will it take for you to resign?” the Iowa Republican asked.
“You clearly do not understand the immigration system,” an indignant Mr. Mayorkas said.
So it goes for the embattled secretary, who is now facing impeachment proceedings. Beneath all the arguments over border chaos, enforcement of laws and constitutional standards for impeachment lies one inescapable issue: Few Cabinet members in history have irked Congress the way Mr. Mayorkas has.
“If Secretary Mayorkas is opening his mouth, he’s lying,” Ms. Hinson told The Washington Times. “I called for him to resign in 2021 after he lied to my appropriations colleagues and me on illegal immigrants being released into our country with little oversight, and the lies haven’t stopped since.”
House Republicans revealed articles of impeachment against Mr. Mayorkas on Sunday and scheduled a first vote for Tuesday. If the articles clear the Homeland Security Committee, where all Republican members say they will vote for it, it will move to the full House. Speaker Mike Johnson has promised speedy action.
SEE ALSO: Mayorkas impeachment: GOP unveils articles accusing DHS secretary of lying, undermining laws
Mr. Mayorkas would be the first sitting Cabinet member to be impeached.
Mr. Mayorkas has appeared before Congress more than any other Biden Cabinet official, and every appearance has seemed to deepen Republicans’ fury as the secretary has sparred with lawmakers, ducked direct answers and insisted the border is secure.
Under questioning by Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, Mr. Mayorkas said he wasn’t familiar with the bracelets smugglers issue to migrants to track them like cargo. Another time, he told Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, he was “not aware” of the tactic smugglers use to send groups of migrants to the border to distract and occupy agents so the cartels can send higher-value contraband through the gaps that open as a result.
When he says the border is secure, Republicans point to record flows of migrants. Mr. Mayorkas says authorities have ousted more of them than any previous administration, but Republicans say they also have caught and released far more than any other administration.
He has called building border wall a “waste,” but Border Patrol agents say it works. He told Congress in one critical hearing that he had “operational control” of the border, even as his Border Patrol chief said he didn’t.
Mr. Mayorkas responds by telling lawmakers they are missing the complexities of the immigration system. When asked about specific numbers, his replies often focus instead on how hard his employees are trying.
He has labeled some of his Republican questioners “misleading,” “revolting” and “adversarial.”
“You are so profoundly disrespecting my 22 years of government service,” he told Mr. Cruz in one exchange.
For Republicans, even Mr. Mayorkas’ demeanor is objectionable.
“You sit there with a smug look on your face,” Rep. Elijah Crane, Arizona Republican, told the secretary in a Homeland Security Committee hearing.
At the same hearing, Rep. Clay Higgins, Louisiana Republican, said: “It’s stunning that you could sit there and smugly grin as if you’ve not miserably failed your country.”
Mr. Higgins, who has introduced his own articles of impeachment against Mr. Mayorkas, told The Times that the looming House vote is about more than Mr. Mayorkas’ personality.
“Impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas has zero to do with his detestable nature,” Mr. Higgins said. “I’m sure his family loves him; it’s his country that hates him.”
Rep. Kat Cammack, a Florida Republican who has had repeated fiery exchanges with Mr. Mayorkas at hearings, said the public appearances aren’t the worst of it.
“Behind closed doors, though, his responses to our questions in private meetings were worse than his obvious obfuscations under oath — telling us if we impeached him we ‘wouldn’t like who comes next,’” Ms. Cammack told The Times.
“I believe he must be impeached. There is no single person who has done more damage to our national security than him. It’s time for him to go,” the congresswoman said.
The two articles of impeachment accuse Mr. Mayorkas of “willfully” subverting the laws meant to control the border and a “breach of public trust” by obstructing Congress and making false statements.
The secretary’s allies say impeachment is a political attack and Mr. Mayorkas is being punished over policy differences in enforcing the law.
Homeland Security officials said it’s particularly striking that House Republicans are moving on impeachment while Mr. Mayorkas is involved in negotiations with Republican senators over legislation to curtail illegal immigration and in high-level talks with Mexico to try to persuade America’s southern neighbor to do more.
Republicans say Mr. Mayorkas has the same tools as President Trump, who left a relatively secure border. In December 2020, the last full month under Mr. Trump, Customs and Border Protection recorded about 90,000 illegal immigrant encounters nationwide. In December 2023, CBP recorded roughly four times that number.
Republicans have been skeptical of Mr. Mayorkas dating back to his time in the Obama administration when he ran U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and then served as deputy secretary at Homeland Security.
While at USCIS, he was the subject of a fierce inspector general’s investigation that all but accused him of lying about efforts to grant immigration visas at the request of big-name Democrats.
In the report, the inspector general noted the “extraordinary number” of his employees eager to come forward and give details about Mr. Mayorkas’ behavior.
Mr. Mayorkas wrote a 32-page reply saying the visa program he was accused of tampering with was “broken” before he arrived and he was just trying to cut through the calcification and get things moving again. He defended his conduct by saying he could have treated the job as a figurehead, taken cushy trips and “enjoyed the perks.”
“Instead, I worked tirelessly and tackled the agency’s biggest challenges,” he said.
Emilio Gonzalez, who ran USCIS in the Bush administration before Mr. Mayorkas ran it under Mr. Obama, said lawmakers feel Mr. Mayorkas doesn’t shoot straight.
“It’s one thing to hold somebody accountable or to have policy differences. But in his case, members of Congress genuinely believe that he has lied to them when he has appeared before them,” he said. “He has insulted Congress by making those statements.”
Mr. Mayorkas has plenty of defenders.
Michael Chertoff, who served as homeland security secretary in the George W. Bush administration, writing in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, called impeachment a “charade” and Mr. Mayorkas “fair and honest.”
In Florida, prominent Cuban Americans leaped to Mr. Mayorkas’ defense. They penned a letter questioning the attack on one of their own and blamed Congress for treating him as an adversary instead of an ally.
“We know that these politicians love their country as much as we do, but instead of helping Secretary Mayorkas address these urgent and important issues, they are doing everything within their power to tarnish a good man’s reputation, willing to sacrifice our nation’s safety and security to do so,” the Cuban Americans said in the letter, first reported by the Miami Herald.
Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said other Cabinet officials, including previous homeland security secretaries, have had testy relationships with Congress.
“With Mayorkas, the enmity has escalated even higher, but unfortunately, that’s just our political moment,” he said. “It does seem like large portions of the House GOP have been itching to make use of their impeachment power from Day 1 of retaking the majority; after Trump’s two impeachments, tit-for-tat demands no less. And it’s fair to say that the distrust and outright contempt runs in both directions.”
Indeed, impeachment fever has taken hold of Washington, with more resolutions filed against executive branch officials over the past three years than in the previous 40 years combined.
That includes 16 impeachment resolutions filed this Congress, which began a little more than a year ago. Mr. Mayorkas and President Biden each has attracted five resolutions. Vice President Kamala Harris, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also have been targeted.
In the previous Congress, 20 impeachment resolutions were filed. Mr. Biden was the subject of 10 of them — five of those filed by a single lawmaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican. Former President Donald Trump was the target of five impeachment resolutions in the 117th Congress. The House approved one of them, though the Senate acquitted him. Mr. Trump was also impeached in the 116th Congress and acquitted in the Senate.
No sitting Cabinet secretary has ever been impeached, though one war secretary in the Grant administration resigned before the House could vote on impeachment. The House proceeded anyway and voted to impeach, but the Senate acquitted the secretary, in large part because senators said he was already out of office and beyond their reach.
Linda L. Fowler, an emerita professor at Dartmouth College who studies congressional oversight, said the impeachment effort against Mr. Mayorkas seems more like a political campaign issue than a governance matter.
“This particular set of hearings is part of the larger picture of a breakdown of the committee system and the loss of expertise that it has fostered in the past. It is also consistent with the lack of interest and capacity in legislating that is characteristic of this particular Congress,” she said.
“I just see it as just one more sign of the Republicans’ failure to govern,” she said.