The articles accuse the homeland security secretary of refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust in his handling of immigration. A House committee is scheduled to approve them on Tuesday.
House Republicans on Sunday released two articles of impeachment against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, charging President Biden’s top immigration official with refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust in his handling of a surge of migration at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee laid out their case against Mr. Mayorkas ahead of a Tuesday meeting to approve the charges, paving the way for a quick House vote as soon as early next month to impeach him. It would be the culmination of Republicans’ attacks on Mr. Biden’s immigration policies and an extraordinary move given an emerging consensus among legal scholars that Mr. Mayorkas’s actions do not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.
The push comes as House Republicans, egged on by former President Donald J. Trump, dig in against a bipartisan border compromise Mr. Mayorkas helped to negotiate with a group of senators, which Mr. Biden has vowed to sign. House G.O.P. lawmakers have dismissed the agreement as too weak and argued that they cannot trust Mr. Biden to crack down on migration now when he has failed to in the past.
The charges against Mr. Mayorkas, should they be approved by full the House, are all but certain to fizzle in the Democratic-led Senate, where Mr. Mayorkas would stand trial and a two-thirds majority would be needed to convict and remove him. But the process would yield a remarkable election-year political spectacle, effectively putting Mr. Biden’s immigration record on trial as Mr. Trump, who has made a border crackdown his signature issue, seeks to clinch the Republican presidential nomination to run against him.
The first impeachment article essentially brands the Biden administration’s border policies an official crime. It accuses Mr. Mayorkas of willfully and systematically flouting laws requiring migrants to be detained by carrying out “catch and release” policies that allow some to stay in the United States pending court proceedings and others fleeing certain war-torn and economically ravaged countries to live and work in the country temporarily. Immigration laws grant the president broad leeway to do both.
The second article charges Mr. Mayorkas with lying to Congress about whether the border was secure and obstructing lawmakers’ efforts to investigate him.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
