Alejandro Mayorkas has failed to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.
Alejandro Mayorkas has failed to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.
I n a representative government, our elected officials are held accountable by the people, but those appointed by the president must be held accountable by Congress. The crisis at our southern border has raged on for two years too long, causing havoc and destruction for migrants, Americans, and the rule of law. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is largely responsible for this, and indeed, he should be held accountable.
Our Founders anticipated that our country might face officeholders like Alejandro Mayorkas, which is why they provided the tools necessary to push back against them. Now it’s time for Congress to use those very tools and begin impeachment proceedings against Secretary Mayorkas.
The Framers did not vest government power without purpose, and they clearly intended those powers to be used properly. They understood that power can’t be controlled by admonition or hope. It had to be checked and balanced. Mayorkas has unquestionably demonstrated impeachable conduct by failing to uphold his duty to follow the laws and secure our borders, leading to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that undermines our sovereignty, endangers Americans, and empowers cartels.
The case to impeach Mayorkas has existed for at least 2 years, and with each passing day Congress sits on its hands, the situation will only get worse.
There have been more than 5.6 million illegal-immigrant encounters at the southern border since Mayorkas took office. Of these — and inconsistent with our laws — at least 2 million illegal immigrants have been released into the interior, many of whom will likely abscond or never be removed anyway.
And the consequences of Mayorkas’s policies — carried out in violation of his oath — have led the way for bad actors and deadly narcotics to kill American and immigrant children. Since he took office, more than 42,000 pounds of fentanyl have been seized at the southern border. There are still three months remaining in FY 2023, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection has already surpassed the entire amount of fentanyl seized in FY 2022 — already a record-shattering year for fentanyl seizures. These numbers show the threat we face with every one of the more than 1.5 million known “gotaways” under Mayorkas’s watch. Indeed, since March 2021, Operation Lone Star in Texas has seized at least 417 million lethal doses of fentanyl in the state.
Further, an innumerable — and significant — number of terrorists have crossed our border on Mayorkas’s watch, only some of which have been caught. In FY 2022, Border Patrol agents arrested 98 known or suspected terrorists (KST) at the southern border — a 553 percent jump from FY 2021’s 15 KST apprehensions. So far, in FY 2023, Border Patrol have caught 140 KSTs, breaking the totals of the past six years. We do not know how many terrorists evaded law enforcement completely.
Yet, when faced with the reality of the border disaster, Mayorkas has gone as far as lying under oath in congressional hearings. He lied the last time he was brought in front of the House Judiciary Committee, saying he had “operational control” of the border as defined by the Secure Fence Act of 2006. But in March 2023, Mayorkas admitted he did not have “operational control.” According to the Secure Fence Act definition, he said, “no administration has ever had operational control.” As I noted at this week’s Judiciary Committee hearing, it’s clear that Mayorkas lied to Congress, that the lie was clearly purposeful, and that this administration wants the American people to believe something that is demonstrably false.
The games he is playing have deadly consequences. One year ago, 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton was raped and strangled to death in her home in Aberdeen, Md. The murderer? A 17-year-old MS-13 gang member caught at the southern border who was processed and released two months before Kayla’s tragic death. According to reports, DHS missed the assailant’s documented affiliation with the Central American gang.
Just weeks ago, federal Judge Reed O’Connor issued an order explaining that sentencing guidelines for human smuggling connected to the cartels are simply inadequate for the horrors of these crimes. And these crimes are horrific. The case describes a man in Baltimore, Md., who paid for his family to be smuggled to the U.S., but his family was held hostage in a stash house in Fort Worth, Texas, until the man paid an additional $23,000. The lawsuit states that the smugglers threatened to “do things to his (2-year-old) daughter” that he would “not like” if he failed to pay.
Despite the dire circumstances, Mayorkas continues to play political games with lives. He has even disparaged the very Border Patrol agents whom he has been entrusted to lead. At a 2021 press conference, Mayorkas opted for political points over the truth and falsely accused agents of “whipping” migrants, linking the incident to “systemic racism.” At the time, Mayorkas knew that what he was saying was untrue — it was later reported that Mayorkas a received an email debunking the “whipping” claim hours before he made those statements.
This is the grim reality of what Mayorkas has permitted and encouraged, and it’s not even the tip of the iceberg.
Some of my Republican colleagues, while they agree that the situation is dire, still do not see these “policy choices” for what they truly are: a complete dereliction of duty and willful blindness to the harms inflicted on our nation. Indeed, some believe that Mayorkas’s actions fail to meet the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and instead fall into the category of what the Framers referred to as “maladministration.” The Framers, however, never intended such a standard.
At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison did warn that the term “maladministration” could be vague enough to make the president serve at the “pleasure of the Senate,” and later the term was swapped for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But, as stated in a 2000 law-review article, maladministration was actually included in the definition of the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” as the founding generation understood it. The article states that the Founders were operating on an understanding of British common law under which the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as an existing legal term “included but was not limited to ‘maladministration.’”
Further, and as one constitutional scholar demonstrates, “the impeachment standard chosen by the Framers ––“high Crimes and Misdemeanors” — possessed a recognized historical meaning derived from long practice and usage; that meaning was broad, extending well beyond ordinary criminality.” And, as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 65, the Framers’ view of impeachment included offenses that were not only strictly criminal, but that “proceed from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
In sum, the Founders knew what they were doing; in their wisdom, they foresaw situations like the one we face today. Impeachment is a solemn undertaking, and it requires that Congress put forward evidence of wrongdoing commensurate with the chaos that potential removal from office can cause.
Having a written constitution comes with the imperative that the government and its people abide by a set of rules and expectations. When that sacred trust is broken, it demands action.
Alejandro Mayorkas has failed to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, he has violated his oath of office and endangered American citizens and foreign nationals alike. Congress should rightfully move to impeach him.