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The House voted 214-to-213 Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, notching a win for Republicans after the same effort narrowly failed last week in embarrassing fashion. It marks only the second time a cabinet member has been impeached in U.S. history, and the first time in nearly 150 years.
Mayorkas will now stand trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed to convict him — seen as an unlikely possibility in the Democrat-controlled chamber.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, who spearheaded the impeachment push, told reporters Tuesday she was “grateful that we were able to get this done with a razor-thin majority” and that “this also sends a message to America that Republicans can get our job done when we work together.”
“My message to the Senate is they should look at the polling and they know that our border security is the number one issue in every single campaign and every single state,” she added. “Every single city in every single community, whether it’s New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, whether it’s California or any other state in the country.”
Democrats could potentially look to get the trial over with quickly. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office announced that the House impeachment managers would present their articles against Mayorkas after the upper chamber’s current two week recess, and that Senators would be sworn in as jurors the next day.
“House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense,” Schumer said in a statement.
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The impeachment articles against Mayorkas centered on his alleged failure to crack down on a surge of migrants at the southern border, accusing him of “willfully and systematically” refusing to enforce the law and of committing a “breach of public trust.” Mayorkas has maintained that Republicans’ charges against him are baseless and legislative action is needed to fix the system.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s return to Washington, D.C. helped Republicans seal the vote for Republicans after last week’s effort ended in a tie. Scalise was out last week for cancer treatment when a surprise return to the floor by Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas shortly after having surgery put Republicans left Republicans one vote short of the majority.
The same group of three Republicans that voted against the impeachment last did so again on Tuesday. They were Reps. Ken Buck, R-Colo., Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc. The lawmakers had argued that the evidence their colleagues case against Mayorkas’ did not rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.
Some Senate Republicans have derided the impeachment effort as well. “It will fail in the Senate,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, whose bipartisan deal collapsed in the face of House GOP resistance, said last week. “If I can use the House term, it will be dead on arrival when it comes over.”
The View From The White House
In a statement after the vote, the President Biden dismissed the impeachment as an “blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship,” and attacked the House GOP for targeting Mayorkas while rejecting a bipartisan compromise on the border.
“This impeachment already failed once on a bipartisan vote,” Biden said. “Instead of staging political stunts like this, Republicans with genuine concerns about the border should want Congress to deliver more border resources and stronger border security.”
— Kadia Goba contributed reporting
