Chief Mayorkas-US Senate ends impeachment of Biden’s border
The Democratic-majority U.S. Senate on Wednesday dismissed impeachment charges against President Joe Biden’s top border official,
bringing a swift end to an effort that House of Representatives Republicans launched months ago.
In a series of partisan votes, the Senate dismissed the charges accusing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of not enforcing
U.S. border laws and lying to Congress, as illegal immigration has hit record levels since Biden took office in 2021.
Biden’s Republican challenger in the Nov. 5 elections that will determine control of the White House and Congress, Donald Trump, has made
the border a central focus of his campaign, and Ipsos polling shows that immigration is a top concern among voters,
and the top issue for Republicans.
Mayorkas denied wrongdoing, and the White House and congressional Democrats blasted the exercise as a misuse of the impeachment powers to highlight a policy dispute,
rather than addressing the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“Once and for all, the Senate has rightly voted down this baseless impeachment that even conservative legal scholars said was unconstitutional,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement.
He chastised House Republicans for staging “baseless political stunts while killing real bipartisan border security reforms.”
Trump earlier this year helped kill a bipartisan Senate deal that would have imposed tough new limits on immigration.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a joint statement with fellow top Republicans, said
“Every single Senate Democrat has issued their full endorsement of the Biden administration’s dangerous open border policies.”
The U.S. Border Patrol made more than 1 million arrests of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in the past six months.
According to internal agency statistics reviewed by media, a pace similar to record-breaking totals during Biden’s first three years in office.
Mayorkas, 64, is a former federal prosecutor who was born in Cuba. He left with his family in 1960 after Fidel Castro came to power.
He maintains that the record numbers of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border over several months stem from Congress’ inability to reform antiquated laws.
TUMULTUOUS EFFORT
The House effort to impeach Mayorkas was tumultuous, as an initial vote narrowly failed.
A week later, with No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise back from cancer treatment, Republicans won approval of the two articles impeachment on a 214-213 vote.
That was not the only impeachment effort bubbling in the conservative-led House,
where Biden himself has been the target of an investigation that so far has failed to produce firm evidence that
he broke any laws related to his family’s past business dealings.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer engineered Wednesday’s Senate outcome
that protected Mayorkas from losing his Cabinet-level job by averting a trial in which senators were sworn in to judge the case.
Republican senators protested Schumer’s move, insisting on a full-blown trial,
and repeatedly sought delays when it became clear there would be no trial.
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell earlier had called for a “thorough consideration” of the charges against Mayorkas.
Disposing of the case without a trial, McConnell added in a Senate speech,
“would mean running away both from our fundamental responsibility and the glaring truth of the record-breaking crisis at our southern border.”
The effort was just the second time in history that a member of a president’s cabinet was impeached by the House.
The last in 1876 involved President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war,
William Belknap, over allegations of corruption. He was acquitted by the Senate.
Chief Mayorkas becomes the second Cabinet secretary to face impeachment in US history
In the history of the United States, Mayorkas became the second Cabinet secretary to face impeachment when he was charged with
“willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and a “breach of public trust” by the House in February.
The impeachment effort was strongly opposed by the Democrats who called it a political stunt and said that
the allegations included a policy disagreement which fell short of the constitutional threshold for impeachment.
“We felt very strongly that we had to set a precedent that impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements,”
said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, on Wednesday evening (April 17).
“If we allowed that to happen, it would set a disastrous precedent for Congress could throw our system of checks
and balances into cycles of chaos,” he added.
The Senate, under the Constitution, is responsible for conducting a trial to determine if impeached officials are guilty and need to be removed from office.
After Democrats dismissed the charges, Johnson and members of his House GOP leadership team said in a joint statement that
“by voting unanimously to bypass their constitutional responsibility.
Every single Senate Democrat has issued their full endorsement of the Biden Administration’s dangerous open border policies.”
Even if the Senate had held a trial, Republicans would not have been able to win the support of the two-thirds of the Senate that is needed to convict and remove Mayorkas from office Democrats control the Senate, 51-49, and they remained united against the impeachment effort.
Not one House Democrat supported it, either.
Even some Republicans questioned the impeachment effort from the start. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney had said for weeks that he was considering voting with Democrats to dismiss the charges but ultimately voted with his party.
After the votes, he said he does not believe the charges rise to high crimes but he did not want to dismiss them because “it was important to engage in some level of debate.”
Mayorkas, who was in New York on Wednesday to launch a campaign for children’s online safety, reiterated
that he’s focused on the work of his department.
“The Senate is going to do what the Senate considers to be appropriate as that proceeds,” he said.
“I am here in New York City on Wednesday morning fighting online sexual exploitation and abuse.
I’m focused on our mission.”
Department spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said after the votes that the Senate’s decision to end the trial
“proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment.”
Johnson delayed sending the articles to the Senate for weeks while both chambers finished work on government funding legislation
and took a two-week recess.
Johnson had said he would send them to the Senate last week, but he punted again after Senate Republicans said
they wanted more time to prepare.
At a hearing with Mayorkas on Tuesday about President Joe Biden’s budget request for the department,
some of the House impeachment managers previewed the arguments they would have made.
Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, the chairman of the House Homeland Security panel, told the secretary
he has a duty under the law to control and guard U.S. borders, and “during your three years as secretary,
you have failed to fulfil this oath.
You have refused to comply with the laws passed by Congress, and you have breached the public trust.”
