Republican members of the House Homeland Security Committee are set to meet on Tuesday to discuss impeachment articles against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, over what they claim are unlawful measures regarding immigration.
If the articles are approved on this meeting, the process will get closer to a floor vote in the House. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Monday that Republicans "have all the evidence showing that Mayorkas has willfully violated his oath of office."
Committee Chair Mark Green added that he expects "lots of procedural motions" at the hearing but that the allegations "absolutely" meet the requirements for impeachment.
Concretely, Mayorkas is facing two articles of impeachment. The first claims he displayed a "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law," and the second that he breached public trust by having "knowingly made false statements, and knowingly obstructed lawful oversight of the Department of Homeland Security."
At the center of the efforts is the implementation of a series of family reunification parole programs, which allowed some foreign nationals to wait in the U.S. for immigration visas. The allegation says Mayorkas should have used those resources to detain people crossing the border illegally.
The second article argues that Mayorkas knowingly made false statements to Congress by saying that the border was secure and that he obstructed oversight.
"He's lied to Congress. ... I mean, we have an oversight authority in the Constitution. He can't just disregard our requests," said Representative Green about the second article of impeachment.
Mayorkas, on his end, pushed back on the allegations with a letter, saying he has already testified before the committee seven times and is being ignored after offering to do so again.
"You claim that we have failed to enforce our immigration laws. That is false," wrote Mayorkas. Another letter from the DHS added that the department has stuck to "the mandatory detention requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act to the maximum extent possible," but a "standard requiring 100% detention would mean that Congress should have impeached every DHS Secretary since the Department was founded."
This is the latest of several clashes between Democrats and Republicans over immigration and border security. On Friday, Biden called on the Congress to approve a bipartisan proposal after conversation were shaken up by former president Donald Trump's calls for them to be tanked.
"What's been negotiated would —if passed into law— be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we've ever had in our country," Biden said on Friday. "It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law."
Meanwhile, border crossings continue breaking records in the U.S. Border Patrol officers arrested almost a quarter of a million people in December for crossing into the U.S. illegally, the highest figure on record.
Concretely, 249,785 arrests were tallied in the southern border in December, 31% more than the previous month and over 10% above the previous record, which had taken place in December 2022 when 222,018 people were apprehended.
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