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That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” the department said in a statement Sunday. The Senate would hold a trial, and a two-thirds vote is required for conviction, an exceedingly unlikely outcome in the Democratic-run Senate. Next up was Arizona’s Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, a possible Republican contender for the U.S. He attested to a massive increase in fentanyl seizures since 2018, and in traffic stops for human smuggling and trafficking, though he noted most drivers are predominantly American. The U.S.-Mexico border is a complex region not easily reduced to sound bites that sometimes turn out to be just myths — or convenient lies. “I think it’s a complete dereliction of duty not to run that full trial process,” he said, borrowing a term that the House once mulled as a charge for Mayorkas.
The Senate's role in impeachments
Asked about the factual inconsistency, a spokesman for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who sits on the Homeland Security committee, told CNN reporter Daniel Dale in colorful language that, essentially, facts are irrelevant in this case. “I’d say impeachment could be done for a good while when you set the precedent of not having a trial for the first time ever. It’s been devalued by what Schumer did, and I think you can expect that kind of thing to happen if they’d ever initiate it on the other end,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said. Some conservative senators see impeachment being closed off as an option for the rest of the year for a different reason. They argue that Schumer’s call to dismiss the articles before a trial could even take place will likely scare off any other attempts this year. Schumer said the charges against Mayorkas did not compare to those against Trump and were engineered to help the former president as he runs again this year.
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Some Senate Republicans, such as Senate GOP Whip John Thune of South Dakota, were noncommittal about backing such a move. Part of Green’s pitch to become chairman has centered on how he will hold the Biden administration accountable over the southern border. "You're aware on Thursday afternoon senators rush to the airport and fly to get out of here," GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters. "Schumer wants it on a Thursday afternoon because he wants no coverage. He wants it to go away quickly. The advantage of starting the week with it is it enables the Senate to focus on it."
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"The managers on the part of the House of Representatives are present and ready to present the articles of impeachment," Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, one of the House impeachment managers, said as he began reading the impeachment articles on the Senate floor. It’s expected that Senate Democrats, who control the chamber, will band together and vote to dismiss or table the issue, then move on to other business, including the chamber's need to renew a critical spy tool before it expires Friday. None of the Senate's 51 Democrats have said they support the Mayorkas impeachment, and even a handful of GOP senators have said the impeachment is meritless.
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Mayorkas, the article said, told Congress "that the border is 'secure', that the border is 'no less secure than it was previously', that the border is 'closed', and that DHS has 'operational control' of the border," among other comments. The resolution accused Mayorkas and the Biden administration of disregarding federal laws that mandate the detention of certain migrants, and overstepping their authority in using an authority known as parole to resettle more than 1 million migrants and refugees in the U.S. "His refusal to obey the law is not only an offense against the separation of powers in the Constitution of the United States, it also threatens our national security and has had a dire impact on communities across the country," the impeachment resolution said. They also attacked the administration’s use of the humanitarian parole authority, which allows the DHS secretary to admit certain migrants into the country. Republicans said the Biden administration has essentially created a mass parole program that bypasses Congress.
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Presidents Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush also put in place group-based parole programs to assist certain categories of migrants. The Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach and remove officials who are found to have committed "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors." Democrats and many legal experts argue that Mr. Mayorkas's actions do not meet this standard. The department on Sunday cited high numbers of people being removed from the country, especially over roughly the last six months and its efforts to tackle fentanyl smuggling as proof that DHS is not shirking its border duties. And, they said, no administration has been able to detain every person who crosses the border illegally, citing space capacities.
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At a news conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans demand the Senate hold a full impeachment trial for Alejandro Mayorkas. Some Republicans have said they would like time to debate whether Mayorkas should be impeached, even though debate time is usually not included in impeachment proceedings. Negotiations were underway between the two parties over whether Schumer may allow that time and give senators in both parties a chance to discuss the impeachment before it is dismissed. At a press conference with a group of Republican senators after the articles were delivered, the impeachment managers demanded that Schumer move forward with their case. Majority Democrats have said the GOP case against Mayorkas doesn’t rise to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” laid out as a bar for impeachment in the Constitution, and Schumer probably has enough votes to end the trial immediately if he decides to do so.
Schumer: Mayorkas impeachment 'awful precedent,' 'abuse of process' - Yahoo Singapore News
Schumer: Mayorkas impeachment 'awful precedent,' 'abuse of process'.
Posted: Tue, 16 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The second article alleged he lied to lawmakers about whether the southern border was secure when he previously testified that his department had "operational control" of the border, and accused Mayorkas of obstructing congressional oversight of his department. After two months of delay, House Republicans on Tuesday delivered articles of impeachment against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to the Senate, as they demanded a full trial of the first sitting cabinet secretary to be impeached by Congress. In the articles, Republicans argue that Mayorkas is deliberately violating immigration laws passed by Congress, such as those requiring detention of migrants, and that through his policies, a crisis has arisen at the border. They accuse him of releasing migrants without effective ways to make sure they show up for court or are removed from the country. They cited an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo written by Mayorkas that sets priorities for whom the agency should target for enforcement proceedings as proof that he is letting people stay in the country who don’t have the right to do so. The historic nature of the trial — the first time in nearly 150 years that a Cabinet secretary was impeached — contrasted with the almost routine feel of the proceedings after senators have sat through two previous impeachment trials against former President Donald Trump in 2020 and 2021.
And with a quick dismissal almost inevitable, the Senate never even set up the chamber for the occasion, which usually includes tables on each side for the impeachment managers and defense lawyers. Senate Republicans had argued for a full impeachment trial after the House narrowly voted in February to impeach Mayorkas for his handling of the border, stating in the two articles that he “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws. Senators voted to dismiss both articles of impeachment and end the proceedings, with Democrats arguing that the articles were unconstitutional. The first article charged Mayorkas with “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with immigration law and second article charged him with a “breach of trust” for saying the border was secure. At the same time, Republicans similarly moved to dismiss former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021, weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
At the time, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who had been hospitalized for emergency abdominal surgery, made a surprise arrival, wheeled into the chamber in scrubs and socks to vote against it — leaving the vote tied and leading to its failure. The evening roll call proved tight, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare GOP majority unable to handle many defectors or absences in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the first Cabinet secretary charged in nearly 150 years. While immigration enforcement has been strained in recent months by large numbers of migrants crossing illegally, the Biden administration has responded by returning or removing more migrants than any prior administration, according to DHS. "The results of his lawless behavior have been disastrous for our country," he said, in part. "Empowered and enriched cartels, mass fentanyl poisonings, surges of terror watchlist suspects, more criminal illegal aliens causing harm in our communities, and traumatized and exploited migrants will be Secretary Mayorkas' open-borders legacy." Administration officials also point to a number of legal experts, some brought forward by the House Homeland Security Committee, who say the constitutional grounds for impeachment have not been met.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who is facing a tough reelection bid in Ohio, called the impeachment trial a “distraction,” arguing that Republicans should instead support a bipartisan border compromise they scuttled earlier this year. The House Homeland Security Committee chairman, Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who is one of the impeachment managers, read the articles aloud as most senators sat in their seats, following along with their own paper copies. Here's what lawmakers on Capitol Hill are saying after the Democratic-controlled Senate voted to kill both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Republicans have repeatedly accused Mayorkas of failing to enforce the nation's laws as a record number of migrants arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats and the Department of Homeland Security have criticized the impeachment effort as a "baseless" political attack, citing experts who have testified that Mayorkas' conduct did not rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors," the legal basis for impeachment under the Constitution. Democrats, as well as Mayorkas, have argued that it’s not the administration’s policies that are causing people to attempt to migrate to America but that the movement is part of a global mass migration of people fleeing wars, economic instability and political repression.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Laying the groundwork for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a House committee on Thursday heard from parents whose tearful testimony sought to link government border policy to their daughters’ deaths and from a law professor warning off the effort. Had they moved to a trial, Republicans still would have lacked the support of two-thirds of the Senate, which would have been needed to convict and remove Mayorkas from office. Constitutional scholars, including conservative legal experts, have said the Republicans’ impeachment case is deeply flawed and weakens Congress’s most powerful tool for holding despots and delinquents to account.
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