Global News Desk:
The U.S. House is poised to impeach Homeland Security
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for issues related to border security, marking a
highly unusual and deeply partisan move against a Cabinet official. This action
has raised concerns among constitutional scholars and garnered rebuke from
Democrats.
Republicans in the House argue that Mayorkas has “refused to
comply” with immigration laws resulting in the record surge of immigrants at
the U.S.-Mexico border and “breached the public trust” by his actions and
comments. The House vote on the charges, which Democrats say are untrue and
hardly grounds for impeachment, is set for Tuesday.
Not since 1876 has a Cabinet secretary faced impeachment
charges and it’s the first time a sitting secretary is being impeached — 148
years ago, Secretary of War William Belknap resigned just before the vote.
“Very clearly Secretary Mayorkas has picked and chosen which
laws he’s going to enforce,” said Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., the chairman of the
Committee on Homeland Security, at a hearing ahead of the vote.
The impeachment charges against Mayorkas come as border
security is fast becoming a top political issue in the 2024 election, a
particularly potent line of attack being leveled at President Joe Biden by
Republicans, led by the party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination,
Donald Trump.
Record numbers of people have been arriving at the southern
border, many fleeing countries around the world, in what Mayorkas calls an era
of global migration. Many migrants are claiming asylum and being conditionally
released into the U.S., arriving in cities that are underequipped to provide
housing and other aid while they await judicial proceedings which can take
years to determine if they may remain.
The House Democrats are expected to unite against the two
articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, calling the proceedings a sham over
charges that do not rise to the Constitution’s bar of treason, bribery or “high
crimes and misdemeanors.”
“This is a total waste of time,” said Rep. Joe Neguse,
D-Colo., at Monday’s hearing.
The impeachment of Mayorkas landed quickly onto the House
agenda after Republican efforts to impeach Biden over the business dealings of
his son, Hunter Biden, hit a lull, and the investigation into the Biden family
drags.
Green’s committee had been investigating the Homeland
Security secretary for much of the past year, but a resolution from Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a Trump ally, pushed it to the fore. The panel
swiftly held a pair of hearings in January before announcing the two articles
of impeachment against Mayorkas.
A former federal prosecutor, the secretary never testified
on his own behalf, but submitted a rare letter to the panel defending his work.
Tuesday’s vote arrives at a politically odd juncture for
Mayorkas, who has been shuttling to the Senate to negotiate a bipartisan border
security package, earning high marks from a group of senators involved in the
effort.
The legislation, which emerged Sunday and is heading for a
test vote Wednesday, is one of the most ambitious immigration overhauls in
years. But other Republicans are panning the bipartisan effort, and House
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., says it’s “dead on arrival.”
It’s not at all clear that Johnson, with one of the smallest
House majorities in modern times, has the support of almost all Republicans
needed to impeach Mayorkas. A few holdouts remained ahead of the scheduled
vote.
Even if Republicans are able to impeach Mayorkas, he is not
expected to be convicted in a Senate trial where Republican senators have been
cool to the effort. In fact, the Senate may simply refer the matter to a
committee for its own investigation, delaying immediate action.
Impeachment, once rare in the U.S., has been used as both a
constitutional check on the executive but also increasingly as a political
weapon.
The House Republicans have put a priority this session of
Congress on impeachments, censures and other rebukes of officials and
lawmakers, setting a new standard that is alarming scholars and others for the
ways in which they can dole out punishments for perceived transgressions.
Experts have argued that Mayorkas has been snared in a
policy dispute with Republicans who disapprove of the Biden administration’s
approach to the border situation.
Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley said impeachment
is not to be used for being “a bad Cabinet member.” Lawyer Alan Dershowitz
wrote, “Whatever else Mayorkas may or may not have done, he has not committed
bribery, treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“This impeachment is exactly what impeachment was never
supposed to be for,” said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the Princeton Program
on Law and Public Policy who testified before the panel, in an interview.
Trump as president was twice impeached — first in 2019 on
corruption over his phone call with the Ukrainian president seeking a favor to
dig up then-rival Biden, and later on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021
insurrection at the Capitol. He was acquitted on both impeachments in the
Senate.
Belknap, who was impeached over a kickback scheme in
government contracts, was acquitted in the Senate trial.( News Source By AP
News)