WASHINGTON – U.S. senators returning from recess this week may soon have to address the two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives passed last month.
Eleven Republican impeachment managers in the House are expected to send the two articles of impeachment to the Senate next week, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, will have to decide whether to hold a trial, hold a vote or dismiss the charges.
The exact timing became unclear Tuesday afternoon when Senate Republicans said they no longer expected the items to be delivered this week.
House Republicans had planned to deliver the articles on Wednesday but were delayed at the request of Senate Republicans, some senators told reporters on Tuesday.
Senators wanted more time to think about the issue before flying home over the weekend, said Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana. Senators often return to their home states on Thursdays.
Once the articles arrive in the Senate, the chamber would have to immediately begin the next steps.
“The Senate will receive the managers as they present the articles of impeachment for Secretary Mayorkas to the Senate,” Schumer wrote in one letter to his caucus on Friday. “Please note that all senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the day after the articles are presented.”
Washington state Democratic Senator Patty Murray will lead an impeachment trial, Schumer said.
But Schumer could have the Senate vote to dismiss the charges without a trial.
Schumer called the indictment a “sham.” The White House has taken the same stance, calling the effort to remove Mayorkas politically motivated and “baseless.”
“This effort is a complete waste of time that constitutional and legal experts have called ‘unconstitutional’ and that even Senate Republicans have made clear they do not want to focus on,” the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations said , Ian Sams, in a statement emailed.
Democrats have also accused Republicans of using Mayorkas’ impeachment as a campaign issue this fall.
Thin loads
It needed Republicans two attempts To Bring charges against MayorkasHe ultimately became the first Cabinet official to be indicted in almost 150 years.
The only Cabinet official in U.S. history to be impeached by Congress in 1876 was Secretary of War William W. Belknap. Belknap was unanimously accused House for “criminal disregard of his duties as Secretary of War and base prostitution of his high office for profit.” The Senate acquitted Belknap, who resigned shortly before the House vote.
The allegations against Mayorkas are less about corruption and more about political differences, critics of the effort said.
The first article of impeachment accuses Mayorkas of a “deliberate and systematic refusal to obey the law,” and the second article accuses him of breaching public trust.
Democrats said the handful of impeachment hearings led by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green failed to produce evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and instead highlighted policy differences.
But House Republicans are still pushing for a trial in the Senate.
“The American people are demanding a secure border, an end to this crisis and accountability for those responsible,” said Mike Johnson, speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives wrote in a letter to Schumer last month. “To file articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or examining a single piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people we all serve.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told local reporters last week that he expects Schumer to hold a vote to reject or table the motion to impeach Mayorkas. Both options would require only a elementary majority of senators.
Given the narrow majority of Democrats in the Senate, it is likely that the two impeachment trials will come to nothing and Mayorkas will remain in his role.
“I would prefer to actually have a trial, but I think the majority will probably prevent that,” McConnell told reporters.
That same week, impeachment managers are expected to send the articles of impeachment to the other chamber. Mayorkas is scheduled to appear before the House Homeland Security Committee, the same body that approved his articles of impeachment. The hearing to discuss the President’s fiscal year 2025 DHS budget request is scheduled for April 16.
The Republican impeachment managers in the House of Representatives are Green of Tennessee, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ben Cline of Virginia, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Clay Higgins of Louisiana and Laurel Lee of Florida , August Pfluger of Texas and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Problem with the campaign
Since Republicans flipped the House of Representatives last year, Republican lawmakers have continued to step up their opposition to the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
The issue also took center stage in the 2024 presidential campaign, as did Biden and former President Donald Trump made competing visits to the southern border in March.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee again this year, has campaigned on fears around immigration – as he did in his 2016 presidential campaign, and the Biden administration is struggling to deal with them the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in more than 20 years.
Republicans’ first major push came last year after the White House scrapped a pandemic-era tool called Title 42 that was used to expel migrants. Republicans in the House of Representatives On the same day HR 2 happened, a messaging law filled with Trump-era immigration policies.
And after a bipartisan Senate deal that was the result of months of negotiations, House Republicans quickly sided with Trump, who urged them to reject the deal because he wanted to campaign on the issue.
Republicans in the Senate soon went away from the agreement to overhaul US immigration law signed by Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona, negotiated.
Tensions in Congress only increased after the collapse of this agreement. House Republicans’ anger with the White House peaked with Mayorkas’ impeachment in delayed February.
On the eve of Biden’s State of the Union address in early March, House Republicans passed a bill named after a Laken Riley, a student from Georgiawhose murder was blamed by conservatives on the White House’s immigration policies.
GOP target
Impeaching Mayorkas has been a goal of Republicans – especially Greene. She initially introduced charges for Mayorkas last September, months before an impeachment inquiry began.
Republicans held two public impeachment hearings in January. The Initially, Republican attorneys general from three states were represented – Montana, Oklahoma, Missouri – and a legal scholar. These attorneys general argued that their states were harmed by the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
The second hearing consisted of two mothers who said the Biden administration’s immigration policies played a role in their daughters’ deaths.
Mayorkas was not a witness at either hearing.
Green, who led the impeachment efforthas argued that the committee gathered evidence in one December report by a Republican committee that found Mayorkas had failed to “enforce laws passed by Congress.”
Mayorkas, the son of Jewish Cubans who fled the Nazis and came to the U.S. as political refugees, is the first immigrant and Latino confirmed to lead DHS.
His confirmation process in 2021 was tough as several Senate Republicans expressed concerns about the Biden administration’s rollback of Trump-era immigration policies.
When the Senate finally confirmed Mayorkas, six Republicans joined Democrats in making the choice 56-43 confirmation vote non-partisan.
The six Senate Republicans who voted for his confirmation were Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and then-Sen. Rob Portman from Ohio.
McKenna Horsley contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that impeachment has been postponed.
