The Homeland Security Department defended Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ahead of the first impeachment hearing Wednesday, saying “extremists” within the GOP are wasting time on the effort rather than working to fix the border.
In a memo, the department said impeachment was the latest in a series of “years-long, politically-motivated attacks” on Homeland Security itself, and suggested Mr. Mayorkas is just the current target for those frustrations.
The department also cast Mr. Mayorkas as a deal-maker, working to clean up what Congress itself has bungled by failing to reform the immigration system over the years.
“Unlike like those pursuing photo ops and politics, Secretary Mayorkas is working relentlessly to fix the problem by working with Republican and Democratic Senators to find common ground and real solutions,” the department said.
“Members of Congress serious about addressing these challenges should oppose this baseless impeachment that is going nowhere and instead work with the Department to keep America safe by properly funding DHS’s vital missions and reforming our broken immigration laws,” DHS said.
No sitting Cabinet secretary has ever been impeached by the House. Mr. Mayorkas could well become the first, with rank-and-file Republicans saying they think they have mustered the votes to do so after falling short in a test vote late last year.
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The impeachment proceeding kicks off with a hearing in the House Homeland Security Committee, where lawmakers will hear from the attorney general in several states where the border chaos has left its mark.
And dozens of Republicans traveled to the border last week to get a first-hand look at the chaos. One of them, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, declared Mr. Mayorkas the greatest domestic threat to national security.
Mr. Mayorkas this week made his own trip to the border, where he blamed Congress for the chaos.
He said lawmakers have failed to fund his department’s immigration efforts properly and have left a broken system in place, depriving him of tools to stem the unprecedented flow of people.
Those explanations rang hollow to Republicans who pointed out Congress has given the two immigration enforcement agencies more money than Mr. Mayorkas asked for in each of the last two years. They also said Mr. Mayorkas is working with the same system as former President Donald Trump, who in 2020 saw the least chaotic border in decades.
The crisis emerged under President Biden, who erased most of the get-tough Trump policies and has taken a more lenient approach to illegal immigrants, catching and releasing millions of people who remain in the U.S. with little prospect of ever dislodging them.
The Homeland Security Department argues those are policy differences that don’t rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the standard the Constitution sets for impeachment.
Impeachment requires a majority vote in the House. If someone is impeached, the Senate then holds a trial, where it takes a two-thirds vote to convict and remove someone from office. That margin cannot be reached in the current Senate without significant support from the chamber’s Democratic majority.
One Cabinet secretary in the Grant administration resigned before he could be impeached. The House voted to impeach him anyway, and the Senate held a trial but did not convict.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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