OPINION:
As the House of Representatives delivers articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week, at least two things must follow. First, the Senate must actually hold a trial since failure to do so would be unprecedented. Beyond that, former President Donald Trump must defeat President Biden in their rematch in November, because that’s the only way to stop the lawlessness that led to the Mayorkas impeachment in the first place.
The calamity at the border is glaringly obvious. Innocent people have been assaulted and murdered by illegal aliens who have been arrested and released multiple times. People who are illegally present are straining already-scarce public resources, overcrowding schools, exceeding the capacities of police and emergency services, and overrunning hospital emergency rooms.
This damage is willfully inflicted by Mr. Mayorkas, who violated the law and his oath of office.
Democrats claim that House Republicans impeached Mr. Mayorkas over basic policy differences on immigration, which is a dishonest attempt to blur the secretary’s culpability. He willfully defied federal law that mandates that aliens who are not “clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted … shall be detained for removal proceeding.”
There are actually four laws governing illegal immigration that include the phrase “shall detain” and another that says “shall take into custody,” and Mr. Mayorkas has violated all of them. He also issued guidelines instructing his department’s employees to ignore laws regarding asylum-seekers.
Further, Mr. Mayorkas flagrantly abused his parole authority, which can be granted only temporarily and on a case-by-case basis “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” Instead, Mr. Mayorkas has paroled entire categories of aliens into the interior of the United States, including all migrants who claim to be from one particular country. This is illegal.
There are other offenses, including his lies under oath to the House and the Senate.
These aren’t isolated crimes. In some cases, he has committed them literally millions of times because that’s the scale of the invasion of our country that’s happening with his complicity.
This is an astounding array of specific crimes committed by a sworn member of President Biden’s Cabinet. The taxpayers are Mr. Mayorkas’ employers, and they deserve a trial so that the rule of law is preserved. In fact, throughout history, the House has impeached 21 people, and the Senate has held a trial every time.
Not once has the Senate dismissed an impeachment without a trial, and the security of our border and the safety of our citizens are too important to select this moment as the time to set a new precedent of sweeping serious charges under the rug.
There has been much public reporting indicating that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer is considering appointing Senate jurors to immediately dismiss the impeachment without hearing a single fact regarding any of the charges. As one of the House managers for Mr. Mayorkas’ Senate trial — if he has one — I know Mr. Schumer will scuttle the proceeding at the Democrats’ own political peril.
A steady stream of public polling shows that the crisis at the border and related violent crime are the top issues for voters in the upcoming November election. This has become a political problem for Democrats, which is why they suddenly shifted their public relations stance on illegal immigration.
For three years, Mr. Biden and the Democrats insisted that the border was secure and that they would never return to the policies of the Trump administration. But their attitude began changing as incidents of horrific violence and murder began to worry law-abiding citizens, and Mr. Biden was even shamed into visiting our southern border for the first time. And predictably, they now blame Republicans for their own malfeasance.
This tells us that Democrats can be forced to pay lip service to border security only when it becomes a political problem for them not to. However, once the 2024 election passes, the political pressure will dissipate, and they will have no motivation to own up to their misdeeds.
This is another reason why it is imperative to bounce Mr. Biden and the Democrats out of power. If Mr. Biden wins in November, he will certainly continue his open border policies, even when they run counter to common sense and the law. Mr. Biden openly campaigned in 2020 on loosening immigration security and undoing almost every Trump immigration policy there was.
No country can last if it doesn’t enforce its own borders, and no other nation on Earth would purposely inflict so much harm on itself. For the good of the United States of America and our very survival, Mr. Mayorkas must be tried and convicted by the Senate, and Mr. Biden must be defeated in November.
There are no other options.
• Harriet Hageman is the lone member of the House of Representatives for the state of Wyoming. She has been named by Speaker Mike Johnson as an impeachment manager for the Senate trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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