The U.S. House of Representatives is set to soon start impeachment proceedings against the federal government official in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, a House committee confirmed on Jan. 3.
The House voted in late 2023 to send an impeachment resolution for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas back to the House Homeland Security Committee rather than impeaching him.
The committee is now preparing to take up the matter, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
“The bipartisan House vote in November to refer articles of impeachment to my Committee only served to highlight the importance of our taking up the impeachment process—which is what we will begin doing next Wednesday,” Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the panel’s chairman, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
Republicans say Americans want the crisis at the U.S.–Mexico border to end and for lawmakers to hold officials responsible for the crisis accountable.
“That’s why the House Committee on Homeland Security led a comprehensive investigation into the causes, costs, and consequences of this crisis,” Mr. Green said. “Our investigation made clear that this crisis finds its foundation in Secretary Mayorkas’s decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability.”
Mr. Mayorkas, 64, has presided over the worst border crisis in American history. Illegal immigration arrests at the southwest border have routinely set new records under Mr. Mayorkas and President Joe Biden, who appointed the former Obama administration official to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The arrests reportedly reached 302,000 in December 2022, which would be the highest monthly figure ever.
Millions of other illegal immigrants have evaded border agents since early 2021, according to leaked DHS data.
The crisis has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, the House committee said in a recent report, including paying for illegal immigrants’ health care and incarceration.
The crisis has had other effects, including overwhelming some of America’s largest cities. Democrat mayors in Chicago, New York, and Washington have criticized the administration after receiving illegal immigrants from border states such as Texas and Arizona.
“The federal government said to New York City: ‘We’re not going to do our job—you do our job. You take care of 4,000 people a week, Eric, you and your team,'” New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters recently.
Mr. Adams said he doesn’t have an answer and that the problem needs to be resolved by the federal government.
Mayorkas, Greene Respond
President Biden hasn’t terminated any federal officials. Mr. Mayorkas has blamed outside factors such as what he described as the displacement of people due to climate change and what he has said is a broken immigration system that Congress needs to fix with legislation.
“Our administration under President Biden’s leadership has fought for that long-needed fix since day one, when President Biden on the very first day of his administration submitted a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress,” Mr. Mayorkas said on MSNBC on Jan. 3.
“Most recently, we have sought much-needed funding for our efforts to address the situation at the border, more Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, more immigration judges, more investment in technology to battle the scourge of fentanyl. We are focused on fixing the challenge, on fixing the problem. We are focused on solutions.”
Mr. Mayorkas also said he would cooperate with the House investigation and hearings.
The DHS said in a statement to media outlets that Republicans are “wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars pursuing a baseless political exercise that has been rejected by members of both parties and already failed on a bipartisan vote.”
“There is no valid basis to impeach Secretary Mayorkas, as senior members of the House majority have attested, and this extreme impeachment push is a harmful distraction from our critical national security priorities,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Secretary Mayorkas and the Department of Homeland Security will continue working every day to keep Americans safe.”
The House narrowly approved on Nov. 13, 2023, a motion that sent an impeachment resolution for Mr. Mayorkas back to the House Homeland Security Committee, with eight Republicans joining all Democrats in the vote.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who authored the resolution, said she was pleased with the news that the House would be holding hearings soon on the matter.
“Before the House left Washington for Christmas break, I forced a vote on my impeachment resolution that put every member on the record. Unfortunately, some Republicans joined every single Democrat to block the resolution and save Mayorkas’s job,” Ms. Greene wrote in a Jan. 3 post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I reintroduced my resolution the very next week and pulled it only once I was guaranteed we would impeach Mayorkas in January. Well, I’m happy to report that the first official impeachment hearing for Secretary Mayorkas will be taking place next Wednesday!”
