The House Homeland Security Committee recently voted to approve two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The committee’s vote to approve the articles came late at night, at around 1 am on Wednesday, January 31, after an extremely long day of parliamentary stalling tactics from the left.
The first of the articles against Secretary Mayorkas accuses him of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.” That charge refers to both the immense number of illegal border crossings and the massive number of migrants who were released into the interior of the country by federal officials. Those in favor of the articles pointed to a September 2021 memo that they argued showed that Mayorkas ordered DHS to limit immigration enforcement.
The second article accuses Secretary Mayorkas of “breach of the public trust.” As evidence for that charge, the committee argued he lied to Congress when he testified that the southern border was “secure,” when he testified that DHS has “operational control” of the border area, and when he supported the false claim that Border Patrol agents had whipped illegal immigrants in September of 2021.
House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, MD, a Republican from Tennessee, commented on the articles of impeachment after his committee approved them. Beginning, he said, “The facts are indisputable—for three years, Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and systemically refused to comply with the laws enacted by Congress, and he has breached the public trust. His actions created this unprecedented crisis, turning every state into a border state.”
Continuing, Chairman Green went on to argue that the conduct of Mayorkas is exactly what impeachment is supposed to remedy, saying, “As a result, thousands of Americans have lost their lives and our nation is experiencing a historic national security, public safety, and humanitarian catastrophe. Make no mistake, Secretary Mayorkas’ lawlessness is exactly what the Framers of our Constitution designed impeachment to remedy. The historical record makes it clear—Congress holds impeachment power to hold accountable public officials who refuse to do their duty, and to deal with grave harms to our political order.”
He then added that he is proud of his committee for standing up to Mayorkas and called on legislators on both sides of the aisle to do the same, saying, “I am proud of the Committee for advancing these historic articles. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the right thing, put aside the politics, and agree that before we can fix Secretary Mayorkas’ mess, Congress must finally hold this man accountable.”
The press statement put out by the House Homeland Security Committee justified and explained the articles of impeachment as well. It said, “At around 1am today, roughly 15 hours after commencement, the Committee adjourned following lengthy debate on the historic articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Significant use of parliamentary tactics at the start of the hearing consumed substantial time. As the proceedings advanced, it became clear that Committee Democrats were offering amendments unrelated to the articles or outside the Committee’s jurisdiction in an effort to further obstruct the impeachment proceedings and delay accountability. Democrats have no grounds to complain about the process after spending months, and even arguing during the markup, that the Committee was spending too much time focusing on the border crisis and Secretary Mayorkas.”
Continuing, it explained the constitutional support for the impeachment effort against Mayorkas, saying, “The historical and constitutional record clearly establish that Secretary Mayorkas’ misconduct rises to the level of impeachable offenses. James Madison, “the Father of the Constitution,” said on the House floor in 1789, “if an unworthy man be continued in office by an unworthy President, the House of Representatives can at any time impeach him, and the Senate can remove him, whether the President chooses or not.” In 1833, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story described several examples of English impeachments in his “Commentaries on the Constitution” when writing about the proper application of the Constitution’s Impeachment Clause, noting that some officials were impeached for ‘attempts to subvert fundamental laws, and introduce arbitrary power.’ In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton writes of impeachment, ‘The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust . . . [T]hey relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.'”
Watch a heartbroken mother testify about the failures of Mayorkas’ DHS here:
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