The Republican-led House of Representatives voted on Wednesday, June 26 to defund Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The move to defund him comes after the House impeached him earlier in the year as a way of rebuking his handling of the border crisis, though the Senate has so far refused to do its duty and vote on the matter, voting to quash the articles of impeachment without a full trial in mid-April of 2024.
The vote to slash funding for Secretary Mayorkas came in an amendment for appropriations legislation meant to fund the Department of Homeland Security with tens of billions of dollars for the next fiscal year. The anti-Mayorkas Amendment was sponsored by Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, and supported by most Republicans in the House.
In fact, the amendment passed in a 193 to 172 vote, with only one Republican turncoat voting against the measure. All Democrats who voted on the amendment voted against it, though 44 Democrats joined 28 Republicans in refusing to vote on the amendment when it was brought to the House of Representatives floor for a vote.
The amendment will, if it somehow makes its way through the appropriations process, bar the government from paying Secretary Mayorkas. Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree, describing the bill on X, wrote, “A super fast gavel – with 72 members not voting – gave Republicans the win on an amendment which bars the feds from paying the salary of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.”
Posting about the amendment’s passage in a post on X viewed nearly a quarter of a million times, amendment sponsor Rep. Andy Biggs wrote, “The House just passed my amendment to defund the office of the DHS Secretary. Alejandro Mayorkas—who was impeached earlier this year—doesn’t deserve a single penny from American taxpayers.”
Rep. Biggs was attacked from the right and left for the amendment. One poster on the left attacked him and those who passed it by saying, “We know Republicans do not want to fix the problem because if they did, they would know they needed funding to do it. More proof that they are the do nothing Congress. 118th. Congress will go down in history as the least productive Congress. Great job guys.”
Attacking him from the right, a pro-Trump account questioned why Rep. Biggs and his colleagues hadn’t done something similar just a few years ago when they had the ability to actually get such a bill passed. That account asked, “Why didn’t you do this years ago when it could have made a difference? That’s the real question.”
This amendment was the latest in a long line of attacks on Mayorkas from the right, which is fed up with the border situation under his watch. For example, attacking Mayorkas in a spring hearing, Sen. Kennedy of Louisiana said, “Under the Biden administration, we have the most encounters. We have had the most encounters with people attempting to come into our country illegally in the history of ever.”
He continued, “Under the Biden administration, we have had the most people entering our country illegally in the history of ever. Under the Biden administration, we have had the most got away at our southern border in the history of ever. Under the Biden administration, we have had the most number of people entering our country under a claim of asylum, having that claim turned down, and still not being deported in the history of ever. And under the Biden administration, we’ve had the most fentanyl coming into our country in the history history of ever.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: By U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Joins US President Joe Biden at FEMA Headquarters, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136857859
"*" indicates required fields