The House voted Monday to parry an effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, following months of criticism from conservatives over Biden administration border policies.
The 209-201 vote sent the resolution from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to the Homeland Security Committee. Democrats voted uniformly to back the motion to refer the Mayorkas resolution to the committee, along with eight Republicans.
Last week, Greene offered the privileged resolution in a way that required the House to vote on impeaching Mayorkas within a few days, and Democrats responded with the the motion.
Before the vote Monday, Greene spoke in favor of her impeachment resolution, criticizing the administration’s “open border policies,” and blamed immigrants for violent crime in the United States, the opioid epidemic and the increased possibility of terror attacks.
Greene claimed Mayorkas violated the law by directing department employees to grant paroles to immigrants and failing to maintain “operational control” of the border with Mexico.
“As secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, he has violated his oath to uphold his constitutional duty by allowing the invasion of approximately 10 million illegal aliens across our borders,” Greene said.
Republicans such as Greene have spent months criticizing Mayorkas over the Biden administration’s handling of border security and immigration. Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, first introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas in January, but Republican leadership has not moved forward with that or numerous other articles introduced against the secretary.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has criticized Mayorkas in the past and told Fox News last month that he thought Mayorkas was an “abject failure” and committed “impeachable offenses.”
A conviction and removal in the Democrat-controlled Senate would be unlikely. There has not been a successful impeachment of a Cabinet member in more than a century, and it would require a two-thirds majority of that chamber.
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