House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the Lone Star State on March 28 to discuss the ongoing crisis at the southern border.
During the meeting, Mr. Abbott advocated for federal border security legislation to help stop illegal border crossings between ports of entry, the governor’s office said.
Mr. Johnson responded by saying that it was “great to see” Mr. Abbott and expressed his support for the governor’s actions to secure Texas’s border with Mexico.
“I believe the Senate needs to hold a trial,” Senate Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said last month.
“It is important that United States senators sit and hear, and the American people hear, about this incredible crisis at our southern border, and people need to be held accountable.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed that sentiment, holding that an impeachment trial to address the charges against Mr. Mayorkas “would be the best way forward.”
The House voted along party lines on Feb. 13 to impeach the secretary on two counts—his alleged “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with existing immigration law and “breach of public trust.”
“We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional obligation to hold this trial,” they wrote. “The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible. To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.”
Democrats have decried the impeachment as a political hit job. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), responding to his Republican colleagues’ letter, described it as a “phony political stunt” targeting Mr. Mayorkas.
The Homeland Security secretary is only the second presidential cabinet member ever to be impeached in the 236-year history of the United States. The first, President Ulysses Grant’s Secretary of War, George Belknap, resigned in 1876 but was later acquitted by the Senate.