House Republicans successfully impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in a monumental vote on Tuesday, a week after their first impeachment effort had failed.
The resolution passed 214 to 213, making Mayorkas the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in nearly 150 years. Representatives Tom McClintock (R., Calif.), Ken Buck (R., Colo.), and Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) opposed the latest impeachment effort alongside Democrats, just as they had done last week.
Mayorkas, who has presided over record levels of illegal immigration since taking office in 2021, narrowly avoided the first impeachment attempt last Tuesday after McClintock, Buck, and Gallagher joined the united Democratic caucus in voting against the resolution. Representative Blake Moore (R., Utah) changed his vote to “nay” at the last minute in order to raise the measure again in the future.
The final vote that night was 216 against to 214 in favor of the resolution.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.), who was absent last week because of cancer treatment, returned to the House on Monday to join his GOP colleagues in impeaching the DHS secretary.
Late last month, House Republicans introduced two articles of impeachment accusing Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and a “breach of public trust.”
The first article of impeachment alleges that Mayorkas knowingly released illegal immigrants into the U.S., rather than detaining them, under the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policy. As for the second article, Mayorkas is charged with lying to lawmakers about whether the southern border was secure during his numerous testimonies on Capitol Hill and obstructing congressional oversight of the DHS.
Both articles of impeachment now head to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where next steps will be considered.
For months, the Biden administration has been pushing Congress to approve legislation in order to fix the immigration system and allocate more resources to the southern border amid a historic rise in immigration levels.
That plan, however, was scrapped after the Senate struck down the negotiated border deal that tied border-security provisions to foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region. Because Senate Republicans and Democrats couldn’t pass the border deal, the Senate passed a legislative package worth $95 billion in foreign aid earlier on Tuesday. The package’s fate remains uncertain in the House, considering it lacks the agreed-upon border measures.
Following the historic impeachment vote Tuesday night, Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said in a statement that Mayorkas “deserves to be impeached” because he “refuses to do the job that the Senate confirmed him to do.”
“From his first day in office, Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and consistently refused to comply with federal immigration laws, fueling the worst border catastrophe in American history,” Johnson added.
President Joe Biden, on the other hand, disapproved of the move and advocated for Congress to pass legislation related to border security.
“This impeachment already failed once on a bipartisan vote. Instead of staging political stunts like this, Republicans with genuine concerns about the border should want Congress to deliver more border resources and stronger border security,” Biden said Tuesday evening.
DHS spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg similarly criticized the vote, saying House Republicans will be “remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border.”
“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,” Ehrenberg said.