The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by a vote of 214-213.
The new vote exactly one week after three House Republicans — Reps. Ken Buck (CO) Mike Gallagher (WI) and Tom McClintock (CA) joined Democrats in voting against the measure. A fourth Republican, Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT), flipped his vote to “no” at the last minute in order to have the opportunity to vote on the impeachment again.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) missed the previous vote while he was receiving cancer treatments. When he returned to vote on Monday, he ended up being the deciding member, allowing the measure to pass by one vote.
Reps Buck, Gallagher and McClintock once again joined Democrats in voting “no” during Monday’s vote. While Buck had already announced his retirement earlier this year, Gallagher also announced that he will not be seeking another term after receiving enormous backlash over last week’s vote.
Mayorkas is the first cabinet member to be impeached since William Belknap, Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant, was impeached in 1876. It is highly unlikely that he will be convicted in the Democrat-controlled Senate and ultimately removed from office, making the action largely symbolic.
DHS spokesman Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement that the impeachment was done “without a shred of evidence or legitimate Constitutional grounds.”
“House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border,” Ehrenberg said.
House Republicans had sought to impeach the DHS secretary for months due to the collapse of the southern border. Since Mayorkas took office in February 2021, more than 8 million illegal alien encounters have been recorded along the southern border, an astronomical increase from the Trump years. Illegal alien encounters have surged passed all-time records
The vast majority of illegal aliens processed at the southern border claim asylum, even though millions of them do not comply with international asylum laws, which require asylum seekers to apply in the first country they enter. Major border entry points have been swarmed by people from Africa, the Middle East, South America, China and dozens of other regions since 2021.
Asylum seekers were required to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under former President Donald Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, though Biden rescinded the order in one of his first acts as president. Biden has instead opted for the “catch and release” option, which has led to massive burdens on “sanctuary cities.”
As illegal immigration has surged to a top concern among likely voters in 2024, the Biden Administration has reversed its years-long claim that there is no crisis on the southern border to instead pin the crisis on Republicans. Biden has routinely advanced the false claim that he cannot take executive action to curtail illegal immigration, ignoring the fact that his predecessor did it repeatedly.
The administration supported the Senate’s border “deal” that would have allowed 5,000 illegal aliens to enter the country every day, spend billions on lawyers for asylum seekers to process their claims faster, and expedite green card handouts until 2030.
Mayorkas was asked if he bears any responsibility for the crisis during an appearance on Meet The Press this past Sunday. “It certainly is a crisis and we don’t bear responsibility for a broken system and we’re doing a tremendous amount within that broken system, but fundamentally, fundamentally, Congress is the only one who can fix it,” he said.
