Republicans will try again Tuesday to impeach US President Joe Biden’s immigration chief as they seek to make the migrant crisis at the southern border a major issue in November’s election.
Hardline conservatives in the House of Representatives, which is narrowly controled by Republicans, have been targeting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for months over a surge in illegal entries from Mexico.
But a first impeachment effort last week ended in humiliating defeat on the House floor after Republican leaders failed to anticipate how many lawmakers would be voting on each side and lost by one vote.
The new vote is expected to be just as close, but the return of Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who had been receiving cancer treatment, is expected to swing it towards impeachment.
But there could be other attendance issues, with a big storm in the northeast threatening to scupper travel plans.
And even if Mayorkas is impeached — the political equivalent of an indictment — he is certain to be acquitted at his trial in the Democratic-led Senate, making the move largely symbolic.
The House — which has only impeached one other cabinet official, Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 — will take one vote on two articles accusing Mayorkas of failure to enforce the law and of lying to Congress.
The vote comes amid a showdown between the House and the Senate over curbing a surge in illegal immigration that led to a record 10,000 apprehensions a day at the border in December.
House Republicans have been accused of acting in bad faith over the Mayorkas impeachment after coming out against a bipartisan Senate deal that would have imposed the toughest asylum and border policies in decades.
Impeachment is meant to be in response to treason and other “high crimes and misdemeanors,” according to the constitution.
Ken Buck, one of three Republicans voted no in last week’s vote, called the move against Mayorkas a “stunt” while fellow rebel Mike Gallagher said it would create a “new, lower standard” for the sanction and “pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”
Twenty-five legal experts called the push “utterly unjustified” in an open letter and were echoed by constitutional scholars who have spoken in Congress against Donald Trump’s impeachments, including Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz.
House Democrats will vote in unison against the impeachment, which is vehemently opposed by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“While House Republicans waste time with political games, Secretary Mayorkas is enforcing our laws and working to keep America safe,” said a memo released by the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday.
“Members of Congress serious about those efforts should work with the administration by fixing our nation’s broken immigration laws and properly resourcing the department’s vital missions instead of facilitating this farce of an impeachment.”
If the vote goes against Mayorkas, the Senate would be compelled to at least open a trial, although it could vote to dismiss the articles, dissolve the trial or refer the articles to a committee.
