House Republicans early Wednesday voted to advance articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, paving the way for the articles to be brought to the floor as soon as next week, The Associated Press reported.
The House Homeland Security Committee voted 18-15 to advance the two articles accusing Mayorkas of “breach of trust” and “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”
The vote by the panel was necessary to move the process of impeaching Mayorkas to a vote by the full House. It passed along party lines.
The vote on the articles came after 15 hours of debate which ended only when Republicans blocked Democrats from introducing any further amendments to the vote.
The last (and only) time a Cabinet official was impeached was in 1876.
Republicans have a slim majority in the House — 219-213. In the Senate, Democrats hold the majority, making it unlikely that Mayorkas would lose his position.
“We are here today not because we want to be but because we have exhausted all other options. … Secretary Mayorkas’ actions have forced our hand,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said during Tuesday’s committee meeting.
Green has claimed that Republicans have enough votes to impeach Mayorkas. He met with senior Republicans during a closed-door meeting Monday night, saying afterward that “nobody had any questions or dissent.”
Republicans are planning a whip check this week to take the temperature of the conference, a GOP source told CNN.
“These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment,” Green said in a statement. “He has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. He has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department.”
Mayorkas sent a letter to Green ahead of the vote defending his record.
“My reverence for law enforcement was instilled in me by my parents, who brought me to this country to escape the Communist takeover of Cuba and allow me the freedoms and opportunity that our democracy provides,” Mayorkas said.
“The problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new,” he continued.
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee slammed the committee’s actions, saying there was no evidence that Mayorkas had committed actions that would justify impeaching him.
“What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real charge or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors — the Constitutional standard for impeachment,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement.