The failed vote was led by hardline Republicans who have been targeting Mayorkas over a surge in illegal entries across the southern border.
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People wait as members of the US House of Representatives vote on the articles of impeachment against the US Homeland Security Secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on February 6, 2024. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
US President Joe Biden’s immigration chief narrowly escaped impeachment over the country’s border crisis Tuesday, in a vote dismissed by Democrats as a political stunt ahead of a presidential election expected to feature immigration as a major issue.
The failed vote was led by hardline Republicans in the House of Representatives who have been targeting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for months over a surge in illegal entries across the southern border.
Republicans were anxious about what was anticipated to be a tight vote, and their concerns were validated as three members of the party joined Democrats, resulting in a 216-214 vote in favor of Mayorkas.
Impeachment serves as the political equivalent of an indictment, and had it proceeded, Mayorkas would have faced the possibility of a trial in the Senate. However, given the Democratic majority in the upper chamber, he likely would have been acquitted and retained his position.
The House — which had only impeached one other cabinet official in its history, Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 — took a single vote on two articles accusing Mayorkas of failure to enforce the law and of lying to Congress.
Republicans hold a slim majority in the lower chamber, and the announcement of opposition to the impeachment by two conservatives caused unease in the leadership team. The unexpected addition of a third dissenter during the vote ultimately thwarted the impeachment effort.
“The failure of the Biden administration to rein in an open border is a national disgrace and will be a stain on his presidential legacy,” Colorado’s Ken Buck, one of the Republican rebels, wrote in an op-ed for congressional newspaper The Hill.
“However, the truth is that this is a policy disagreement masked as an impeachment.”
California’s Tom McClintock, another rebel, released a 10-page memo accusing his party of failing to identify an impeachable “high crime or misdemeanor.”
The impeachment resolution accused Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” on securing America’s borders and charged him with “breach of public trust.”
The vote came amid a confrontation between the House and the Senate regarding efforts to address a surge in illegal immigration, resulting in a record 10,000 daily apprehensions at the border in December.
House Republicans faced accusations of bad faith in pursuing the Mayorkas impeachment, particularly after opposing a bipartisan Senate deal aimed at implementing the strictest asylum and border policies in decades. Originally, the Republicans had sought these measures as a condition for providing aid to Ukraine.
However, the bill faced increasing opposition, turning into a significant backlash, as former president Donald Trump, who is seeking reelection and sees immigration as one of Biden’s top vulnerabilities, urged his party to oppose it.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of yielding to Trump’s political ambitions rather than addressing the “broken immigration system.”
“Instead, what you have to offer the American people is this sham impeachment, this political stunt, this waste of time. But you will not fool the American people,” he said.
House Democrats voted unanimously against the impeachment, a stance also strongly opposed by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“I think it is baseless. I think it’s a political process, and I am not engaged in politics,” Mayorkas told The New York Times Magazine ahead of the vote.
He also criticized Republicans for their “accusatory, rather than solution-focused” approach in an interview with The Washington Post.
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