Articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will be presented on April 10, with Senators sworn in as jurors a day later.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has provided an update on the looming impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, including when the House impeachment managers will present the articles of impeachment in the Senate.
Mr. Schumer disclosed in an
April 5 letter to fellow Democrats that the Senate will receive the House impeachment managers on April 10, when they will deliver Mr. Mayorkas’S articles of impeachment to the upper chamber.
“Please be advised that all Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the day after the articles are presented, and Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray will preside,” Mr. Schumer wrote, while reminding his fellow Democrat senators that their presence next week “is essential.”
The trial officially begins when the House impeachment managers, who will be acting as Mr. Mayorkas’s prosecutors, formally deliver the
articles of impeachment to the 100 senators in the upper chamber and present their case.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) asked Mr. Schumer
in a March 28 letter to schedule the trial “expeditiously,” while accusing Mr. Mayorkas of refusing to enforce U.S. immigration laws and of lying to the American people about the severity of the border crisis.
It’s estimated that more than 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since President Joe Biden took office.
President Biden and members of his administration have defended their actions on the border, variously blaming a “broken immigration system,” crime and corruption in illegal immigrants’ home countries, and even climate change, for the problem.
Mr. Mayorkas faces two articles of impeachment—the first article charges him with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” while the second article accuses him of “breach of public trust.”
The Democrat-controlled Senate is widely expected to dismiss Mr. Mayorkas’s impeachment trial.
Background
Republicans have blamed Biden administration policies for fueling the border crisis while calling for measures such as ending the Biden administration’s contentious “catch-and-release” policy, expanding expedited removals, renewing border wall construction, and reinstating the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy.Under the Biden administration’s catch-and-release program, illegal immigrants are released into U.S. communities to await asylum hearings. Mr. Mayorkas
recently admitted that over 70 percent of illegal immigrants are being released after an initial arrest.
In terms of illegal immigrants being released into U.S. communities, a
report from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for fiscal year 2023 shows a staggering rise over the past few years in the number of illegal immigrants on the non-detained docket. This is the case management system or list of individuals facing immigration proceedings (including final orders of removal or pending removal proceedings) but not held in ICE detention.
This number has soared from 4.7 million in 2022 to 6.2 million in 2023—a jump of over 30 percent. By comparison, the number of illegal immigrants on the non-detained rolls was 3.26 million in 2020 and 3.6 million in 2021.
Republicans have repeatedly raised concerns about the national security threat associated with the influx of illegal immigrants.
In October 2023, a group of Republican senators
sounded the alarm after Border Patrol agents caught illegal border crossers carrying explosives that Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said were “tailor-made for terrorism.”
More recently, a group of Homeland Security Republicans expressed concern in an
April 3 letter to Mr. Mayorkas about DHS’s current practices in processing and releasing known or suspected terrorists into the United States.
“We are now facing a consistent stream of cases highlighted in the news of aliens allegedly on the terrorists watchlist either being apprehended at the border or discovered in the interior,” they wrote.
They cited a recent widely-publicized case in which an individual on the FBI’s terror watchlist was mistakenly not flagged during an initial screening and released into the country. After being allowed to roam free for nearly a year, a subsequent re-screening confirmed the individual as a “terrorist member of al-Shabaab,” leading to his eventual arrest by ICE.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
data show that there’s been a 3,000-plus percent increase in the number of people on the FBI’s terror watchlist caught trying to enter the country illegally, when comparing former President Donald Trump’s term and that of President Biden to date.
President Trump has made border security a key part of his 2024 presidential campaign platform, promising to undo President Biden’s “open border” policies on day one of his administration, if elected.
