WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is poised to edge closer to becoming the first presidential cabinet member impeached in nearly 150 years.
House Republicans are scheduled to markup two articles of impeachment during a Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday, accusing Mayorkas of exacerbating the U.S.-Mexico border crisis.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the House is moving ahead with Mayorkas’ impeachment “by necessity” with a full House vote “as soon as possible.”
Tuesday’s hearing follows two official impeachment hearings by the House Homeland Security Committee against Mayorkas. Republicans heavily criticized Mayorkas’ decision-making, alleging failure to enforce border laws, resulting in the influx of violent criminals and drugs into the country.
“It is the most egregious breach of our national security in the history of this country,” said Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas. “Those effects are being played out every single day in so many places.”
In a pointed letter sent hours ahead of the hearing, Mayorkas provided a rebuttal to the charges against him.
“You claim that we have failed to enforce our immigration laws. That is false. We have provided Congress and your committee hours of testimony, thousands of documents, hundreds of briefings, and much more information that demonstrates quite clearly how we are enforcing the law,” Mayorkas wrote.
Mayorkas pointed to statistics collected since the Biden administration lifted Title 42 and its limitations on seeking asylum last May, noting they have since removed more than 500,000 individuals.
Mayorkas defended his work at the department and his negotiations with the Senate, and he urged the House to focus on updating the nation’s “broken and outdated” immigration laws for the 21st century and an era of record global migration.
Democrats and DHS continue to defend Mayorkas, arguing that he is acting under his legal federal authorities at the department and that the criticisms against him do not rise to the level of impeachment. They’ve accused Republicans of playing political games and using impeachment to settle policy disputes.
Some Republicans criticize Mayorkas for not testifying during impeachment hearings. However, DHS has responded by highlighting his previous 27 appearances before Congress in the last three years, which is more than any other member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet.
“Impeachment has a high constitutional bar, and the House Republicans have come nowhere close to meeting it,” said House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Even if the House impeaches Mayorkas, Senate conviction is highly improbable, given Democratic control.
While the impeachment discussion unfolds on Tuesday, another group of House Republicans in a separate committee will hold a hearing at the Capitol on the authority of individual states to secure the border when “the federal executive fails to do so.”
It comes amid the ongoing standoff between Texas and the federal government over Texas National Guard members building razor wire along the border and limiting access for federal agents to a park along the border.
The Associated Press and The Hill contributed to this report.