‘We’re going to impeach him’: GOP makes case for ousting Mayorkas

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The man leading impeachment proceedings laid out the Republicans’ case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday, saying he has earned ouster because of his lies to Congress and the public, plummeting morale among his employees and increasing deaths at the border.

Rep. Mark Green, Tennessee Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Mr. Mayorkas broke a relatively secure border through incompetence and “intentional” disregard of laws that call for the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants.

Mr. Green batted aside complaints that the secretary’s actions don’t rise to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” language of the Constitution’s impeachment clause. He said refusing to follow the law is “sufficient grounds for impeachment.”

“After nearly three years of watching this unfold, what other conclusion is there than this is an intentional crisis?” Mr. Green said. “What we’re seeing here is a willful violation of his oath of office.”

Mr. Green was speaking at the first hearing in impeachment proceedings against Mr. Mayorkas, who has overseen President Biden’s border chaos.

Republicans said Mr. Mayorkas lied to Congress when he claimed the border was closed or secure, that he is violating the Secure Fence Act by not achieving “operational control” of the border, that he is infringing the Immigration and Nationality Act by overseeing the largest mass catch-and-release in history, and that he has subverted the Constitution by allowing an “invasion.”

Few Democrats defended Mr. Mayorkas. Instead, most focused on condemning the hearing and calling the push for impeachment a political attack not worthy of the weighty demands of the Constitution.

“You cannot impeach a Cabinet secretary because you don’t like a president’s policies. That’s not what impeachment is for. That’s not what the Constitution says,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the committee.

He said Mr. Green had promised campaign donors an impeachment and other Republicans were using the proceedings to gin up support among their political base.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Democrat, called the impeachment proceeding “a diminution, a subversion and a destruction of the Constitution.”

In a memo ahead of the hearing, the Homeland Security Department blamed “extremists” for pushing impeachment and said Republicans’ time would be better spent working on improvements to the border.

“Unlike 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 in the memo.

Mr. Mayorkas is part of negotiations over changes to the border as part of a $110 billion national security spending bill.

Democrats said the talks prove that Congress has options other than impeachment to express their discontent.

Late last year, the House took a test vote on impeachment and fell shy of the majority needed. The House instead voted to send that resolution, sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, to the Homeland Security Committee for action.

Republicans said they think have the votes lined up to succeed.

“We’re going to impeach him. He’s going to be impeached. And he should be,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, Louisiana Republican. He said Mr. Mayorkas has “brought generational trauma” to the U.S.

Rep. Dina Titus, Nevada Democrat, said ousting Mr. Mayorkas won’t change anything because Mr. Biden sets the overall policy.

“What you really want to do is get rid of President Biden,” she told Republicans.

Impeachment requires only a majority vote in the House. If the House clears that bar, representatives would take articles of impeachment to the Senate, which would hold a trial. A two-thirds vote in the Senate is required to convict and remove someone from office.

Mr. Mayorkas would be the first sitting Cabinet official to be impeached, though a War Department secretary in the Grant administration resigned before he could be impeached.

The House voted to impeach the war secretary anyway, but the Senate acquitted him.

During the hearing on impeaching Mr. Mayorkas, the attorneys general in three Republican-led states testified about the impact of a broken border on their jurisdictions, particularly with the flood of fentanyl they said is killing their residents.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he learned about borders as an Army soldier deployed to Iraq. He said he was assigned to secure Iraq’s border with Syria without any catch-and-release or parole.

“We closed the border to ensure the country was safe,” he said.

Democratic witness Frank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri Law School who studies impeachment, said Mr. Mayorkas’ behavior doesn’t meet the Constitution’s standards.

“It is not supposed to be a routine tool to resolve ordinary public policy debates,” he said.

He said abuse of office involves using powers for illegal or illegitimate ends. Carrying out the president’s policy priorities doesn’t meet that, he said.

“Based on all the information available to me, I have not found he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors,” Mr. Bowman said.

By contrast, he said the 2021 case against President Trump for the events of Jan. 6 was worthy of impeachment.

Democrats demanded that Mr. Mayorkas be given protections and rights, such as allowing his attorneys to be present at hearings and to challenge evidence.

Mr. Green said the committee will follow House rules.

Mr. Thompson questioned whether the committee was breaking House rules by even taking up impeachment. He said that power belongs to the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Green pointed to last year’s bipartisan vote referring Ms. Greene’s resolution to the committee as the source of authority for the proceedings.