Republican Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs introduced House Resolution 582 on August 10. If passed by the House of Representatives, this measure would impeach President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
The safety and security of our country requires passage of H. Res. 582.
Unlike the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump by the same House Democrat majority now in control, the impeachment resolution directed against Mayorkas is based on real substance and, considering the Biden-manufactured crisis still unfolding at our southern border, is extremely timely.
Over the course of our nation’s history, numerous federal judges have been impeached, as have three presidents – Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. Only a single cabinet-level official has suffered this fate; Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876 for bribery.
The lack of precedent for impeaching high Executive Branch officers, however, should not deter representatives from proceeding against Mayorkas, who has presided over the Biden administration’s disastrous and dangerous open border policy since his confirmation Feb. 2.
Res. 582, as authored by Biggs and co-sponsored by a dozen of his fellow Republicans, describes the clear and disturbingly factual basis for which Mayorkas should be impeached.
On paper, Mayorkas’ qualifications and background should have made him an outstanding leader of the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, which was established in 2002 to consolidate in a single executive department myriad responsibilities of the federal government relating to all aspects of border security, from customs and immigration to anti-terrorism, but most importantly, protection of our nation’s borders. The Cuban-born Mayorkas served previously as a federal prosecutor and then as a top official in DHS itself, including deputy director during the final three years of the Obama administration.
On his current watch, upwards of 800,000 aliens have poured across our border with Mexico into the arms of waiting U.S. Border Protection officers. Add to this number the estimated 1,000 aliens per day who cross the same border but “get away,” and the number balloons to one million or more; larger than the population of Wyoming and Alaska combined.
It is not simply the huge number of non-citizens that have been permitted to walk into our country from Mexico during the past half-year that is alarming. What truly justifies Mayorkas’ impeachment is the fact that, as secretary, he deliberately has allowed this massive breach in violation of federal laws that clearly direct him to stop it. These violations of federal law are set forth in H. Res. 582, and include charges that Mayorkas:
- “willfully refused to maintain operational control of the border as required by the Secure Fence Act of 2006:”
- refused to contract for additional border wall construction even though the Congress appropriated funds expressly directing his Department to do so;
- unlawfully released aliens into the interior of the country without detaining them for inspection and processing, as required by the Immigration and Nationality Act;
- unlawfully released hundreds of thousands of aliens into the interior of the country, relying solely on them to self-report to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices even though federal law prohibits such practice; and
- exposed numerous federal employees and countless American citizens to COVID-19 by permitting aliens to enter the United States and be transferred to locations across the country without subjecting them to screening for the virus as required by the Public Health Service Act.
None of the articles of impeachment set forth in the pair of resolutions lodged against Trump in December 2019 and January 2021 were based on any specific violations of federal laws. To the contrary, the two articles against Mayorkas contained in H. Res. 582 include extensive evidence supporting the allegations that he willfully violated several specific federal laws.
Permitting Mayorkas to continue his lawless and irresponsible tenure at the helm of DHS necessarily will endanger even more millions of American citizens than his reckless leadership already has. He richly deserves to be impeached.
