House Republicans cleared the way on Tuesday for a vote to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, as Democrats denounced the move as a purely partisan exercise meant to boost the electoral prospects of Donald Trump.
The historic vote, scheduled for early evening, would mark the first time since 1876 that the House has impeached a cabinet official, but with hours to go before a scheduled evening vote its prospects were unclear. But Democrats have retorted that Republicans were abusing the impeachment process to attack one of Joe Biden’s cabinet members during a crucial election year, in which immigration may play a key role.
With Republicans in control of the House by a whisker-thin margin, and Democrats uniformly opposed, they can afford only a few defections. Two Republicans have already announced their opposition and a handful more appeared undecided as the House proceeded to debate the charges against Mayorkas.
Congressman Ken Buck, a Republican of Colorado who declared himself solidly opposed to the impeachment effort, said the accusations leveled against Mayorkas amounted to a “policy difference”, not an impeachable offense.
“If we start going down this path of impeachment with a cabinet official, we are opening a door as Republicans that we don’t want to open,” Buck said on MSNBC shortly before the afternoon vote.
Republicans are seeking to impeach Mayorkas on charges that he willfully refused to enforce immigration law and breached the public trust, overriding the objections of legal experts, including some prominent conservatives, who say they have failed to produce compelling evidence that the cabinet secretary had committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
“I respect everybody’s view on it,” House speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “I understand the heavy weight that impeachment is.”
He described impeachment as an “extreme measure”, but said that “extreme times call for extreme measures.”
During the floor debate on Tuesday, Republicans leveled broad accusations that Mayorkas had mismanaged oversight of the US-Mexico border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.
“The constituents I represent do not understand why Texas has had to endure basically an invasion during the tenure of the secretary of Homeland Security,” Congressman Michael Burgess, Republican of Texas, said in floor remarks ahead of the procedural vote. “What are we left to do?”
A Harvard-Harris survey conducted this month showed that immigration is now an important concern for voters, with 35% of respondents citing the issue as their top priority. But Democrats say that the Republican impeachment effort is a political stunt rather than meaningful reform.
“Do we have a problem at the border? Absolutely,” said Democratic congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. But, he said: “It’s clear that this is not about Secretary Mayorkas or a high crime and misdemeanor. It is about a policy disagreement with President Biden.”
Trump has made the “crisis” at the border a focus of his presidential campaign and celebrated Republicans for impeaching Mayorkas on very shaky grounds.
Meanwhile, Republicans barreled toward a vote as a border deal recently brokered by the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of senators appeared to be on the brink of collapse. After months of painstaking negotiations, Senate Republicans appear ready to oppose the agreement, all but ensuring it will fall short of the 60 votes needed to pass legislation in the chamber.
In the event it does pass the Senate, Johnson has described it as an inadequate response to the situation at the border and has declared the deal will be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.
House Republicans’ opposition to the bipartisan proposal and their support of Mayorkas’s impeachment sparked accusations of hypocrisy among Democrats, who argued their colleagues were uninterested in substantive changes to immigration policy even as they expressed outrage over the situation at the border.
The impeachment of Mayorkas has attracted notable criticism from conservatives, including in an op-ed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board that was frequently cited by Democrats on Tuesday.
“As much as we share the frustration with the Biden border mess, impeaching Mr Mayorkas won’t change enforcement policy and is a bad precedent that will open the gates to more cabinet impeachments by both parties,” the board wrote in an editorial published on Tuesday. “Grandstanding is easier than governing, and Republicans have to decide whether to accomplish anything other than impeaching Democrats.”
