GOP ponders second Mayorkas impeachment to block him from future office

Republican staffers on Capitol Hill are discussing a second impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to block him from holding office again, The Washington Times has learned.

Staffers said their conversation hadn’t reached the level of lawmakers, but they acknowledged an appetite for some gesture to demand accountability for what Republicans consider an immigration catastrophe Mr. Mayorkas has overseen for nearly four years.

“Staff people are talking about it among themselves,” said a longtime Republican aide who is active on immigration issues. “People are pissed. Every time you think you’ve seen the most ridiculous possible thing his department has done, they manage to top it.”

In February, Mr. Mayorkas became the first sitting Cabinet secretary in U.S. history to be impeached by the House.

The Senate voted to reject the case without a trial.

Next year, the Republican-controlled Senate may be more committed to holding a trial. Given the chamber’s partisan makeup, conviction, which requires a two-thirds vote, is still a long shot.

Even if Mr. Mayorkas’ term has ended, a conviction could allow senators to bar him from holding office again.

Emilio Gonzalez, who led U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Bush administration, said Republicans’ demands for accountability are fueling the impeachment talk.

“He oversees the border. He is the secretary of homeland security. He is Mr. Border Security. All of this falls under his responsibility. Nobody has been held accountable, and he is the accountable party,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

He called what has transpired in immigration over the past few years “the largest human trafficking operation in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”

Congress will have a little more than two weeks from Jan. 3, when it is sworn in, until the Biden administration ends on Jan. 20.

Pursuing impeachment after an official leaves office has precedent. House Democrats impeached Donald Trump after he left the White House in 2021, and the House impeached William Belknap, who had resigned as war secretary, in 1876.

In both cases, the Senate did not vote to convict.

The Times has reached out to Mr. Mayorkas’ office for comment.

Mark Morgan, who ran Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration, said the impeachment route for Mr. Mayorkas would be too political.

He said he would prefer that the Justice Department pursue criminal perjury charges against Mr. Mayorkas for his insistence that the border was “secure.”

“He was intentionally misleading the American people and hiding the magnitude of the chaos and lawlessness at the border and its impact on our country’s safety and national security,” Mr. Morgan told The Times. “He should be held accountable for those lies.”

Mr. Mayorkas has had a lengthy public career, which he often deploys in combative sessions with members of Congress. He reminds them that he was a federal prosecutor in the Clinton era, ran USCIS and then served as homeland security deputy secretary in the Obama administration and has been department secretary since Feb. 2, 2021.

He has overseen the most chaotic border in modern U.S. history, with more than 10 million unauthorized migrants encountered and millions of those released into American communities, often under programs he fabricated to ease their arrival.

He has justified his initiatives as attempts to cool the border. Critics say he is breaking the law.

Mr. Mayorkas has received mixed reviews from his workforce.

Border Patrol agents and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers say his orders restrict their ability to carry out their duties and have destroyed their morale.

He is also known as “Saint Ali, the patron saint of administrative leave,” for doling out paid leave as a gift to all 260,000 department employees.

On Friday, they celebrated his latest grant of two more days in honor of Thanksgiving, bringing this year’s total to eight days. The Times has calculated that he has given out nearly $3 billion worth of extra time off to employees during his tenure.