A powerful House panel voted to move articles of impeachment against a senior Biden administration official for an official floor vote. The move could result in the first impeachment in decades as Republicans accused Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of serious incompetence due to his approach to the ongoing border crisis.
The House Rules Committee voted Monday to advance the impeachment effort to a full House vote, which will likely take place this week. House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said that the secretary “has refused to uphold his oath of office. If he will not do so — his duty — then unfortunately the House must do its constitutional duty.”
Cole said that he took “no pleasure’ in the committee’s actions, but added that the secretary’s actions “both in his intentional refusal to enforce all laws and abandoning the confidence of Americans — require us to act.”
🚨BREAKING: The House Rules Committee just approved impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to be voted on the House floor.
The Republican majority passed the resolution over Democratic objections in an 8-4 vote, affirming Mayorkas’ “willful… pic.twitter.com/pMsgsmw8XD
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) February 6, 2024
The decision was decided in an 8-4 vote, with the Republican members voting for and the Democratic members voting against following four hours of debate.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) said that Mayorkas “knows what the laws are, and he has created systems to subvert those laws.”
“If he was a Republican, I’d be doing the exact same thing,” he added.
Mayorkas’ tenure has come under increasing scrutiny due to the increased flow of migrants across the southern border. The Biden administration’s scrapping of former President Donald Trump’s Title 42 asylum program resulted in a significant increase in the number of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the country.
Last year saw the highest level of attempted crossings in American history, with federal law enforcement counting more than three million such attempts. December 2023 saw the number of border encounters pass 300,000 for the first time.
A number of the nation’s large cities have struggled to handle the significant influx of migrants, including New York City, which received almost 200,000 migrants in the past two years.
