Commentary
Members of Congress have promised to “hold accountable” those in power so often that the phrase has become hollow. Exhibit A:
Alejandro Mayorkas. For many months, President Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security has dodged responsibility for his direct implementation of a historic border crisis.
Until now.
On Feb. 13, the
House successfully impeached Mr. Mayorkas for the irreparable damage he has done to U.S. sovereignty, security, and the rule of law. Now,
it’s the Senate’s turn to hold Mr. Mayorkas accountable by conducting a legitimate impeachment trial to examine the evidence in detail in front of the American people.
The House’s first
article of impeachment was for Mr. Mayorkas’s willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law. As a “civil Officer” of the United States, Mr. Mayorkas doesn’t get to pick and choose which laws to enforce and which to ignore, and he certainly doesn’t have the right to
violate the law. Yet that’s what he’s done for three dangerous and chaotic years.
Consider Mr. Mayorkas’s own admissions. He bragged in a 2022 interview with CBS News about “
fundamentally chang[ing] immigration enforcement,” stating, “For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states an [illegal alien’s] unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.”
This is a willful and systemic violation of Section 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that “any alien ... shall ... be removed if the alien is within one or more of the following classes of deportable aliens,” including being inadmissible at the time of entry.
Not “some” aliens. “Any alien.” Not “may” be removed. “Shall be removed.”
Mr. Mayorkas also recently admitted that more than 85 percent of inadmissible aliens encountered by
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been released into the United States.
Not only is this a wholesale violation of Section 237, but it’s also an intentional violation of Sections 235 and 236 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which require mandatory
detention for aliens who: 1) are awaiting a determination of the legitimacy of their asylum claim and, if found not to be legitimate, until they are removed from the country; 2) have been determined by an immigration officer not to be entitled to admission until they can be removed; and 3) are deportable for having committed crimes, or for terrorist activity.
Furthermore, Mr. Mayorkas has flagrantly and systemically violated Section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the homeland security secretary very limited discretion to temporarily parole an inadmissible alien into the country “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
Mr. Mayorkas has created and maintained dozens of parole programs based on nationality, through which he has
mass-paroled tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens each month and provided them with work authorizations, something Congress didn’t authorize.
Mr. Mayorkas’s parole programs violate each factor of Section 212(d)(5): They are not case-by-case, they are not for urgent humanitarian reasons, they advance no significant public benefit, and, by granting parolees work authorization, they are not meant to be temporary.
The result of Mr. Mayorkas’s mass paroles and refusal to detain or remove the vast majority of illegal aliens at our borders has resulted in an
unfathomable 10.7 million encounters with them as well as known “gotaways.” By knowingly overwhelming border agents and ordering them to process and release millions of illegal and inadmissible aliens into the country, Mr. Mayorkas deliberately has endangered the public safety of Americans and imposed huge costs on state and local governments and communities.
Mr. Mayorkas is well aware that Border Patrol agents can’t adequately vet all those they encounter, let alone the more than 1.8 million who evaded agents. Mr. Mayorkas also knows that among them come known and
suspected terrorists, convicted aggravated felons, serial rapists, pedophiles, dangerous gang members, human traffickers, and huge amounts of fentanyl and other illicit drugs.
Mr. Mayorkas has had three years to change course, to secure the border and protect Americans, but he hasn’t. Instead, he’s grown only more deceitful about his operations.
He has hidden from Americans
night flights to secretly dump illegal aliens into unprepared American communities. He has given billions of U.S. tax dollars to secretive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that operate an extensive infrastructure intended to facilitate the entry and lengthy residence of illegal aliens in the country while refusing to answer questions when confronted.
Mr. Mayorkas told Americans that border crossings were down in early 2023, while playing a con game, using the CBP One mobile app to automate the entry of mass parolees through ports of entry. And now, he demands more taxpayer dollars in a supplemental funding package to refill the NGOs’ empty coffers and pay off sanctuary cities that shelter illegal aliens.
Americans deserve a real Senate impeachment trial of Mr. Mayorkas. Dismissing or tabling the impeachment, sending it to a trial committee to languish, or holding a one-day trial would all be unacceptable options.
And any senator who helps Mr. Schumer—including Republicans—would be complicit in a cover-up that tries to hide the dangerous misconduct of one of the worst officials to ever serve in the federal government.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
