Senate action on DHS chief impeachment coming this week

As senators return from recess this week, they’ll have to deal with the two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that House Republicans passed last month.

On Wednesday, 11 House Republican impeachment managers will walk the two articles of impeachment to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,D-N.Y., will have to decide whether to hold a trial or call a vote to either table or dismiss the charges.

“The Senate will receive the managers as they present the articles of impeachment for Secretary Mayorkas to the Senate,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his caucus Friday. “Please be advised that all Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the day after the articles are presented.”

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would preside over an impeachment trial, Schumer said.

But Schumer could also have the Senate vote on dismissing the charges without a trial.

Schumer has called the articles of impeachment 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 said is ‘unconstitutional’ and that even Senate Republicans have made clear they don’t want to focus on,” White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations Ian Sams said in an email.

Democrats have also accused Republicans of using Mayorkas’ impeachment as a campaign issue this fall.

Thin charges

It took Republicans two tries to impeach Mayorkas, eventually making him the first Cabinet official to be impeached in nearly 150 years.

The only Cabinet official in U.S. history that Congress impeached was Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1867. Belknap was unanimously impeached by the House for “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.” The Senate acquitted Belknap, who’d resigned just before the House vote.

The accusations against Mayorkas are less about corruption and more focused on policy differences, critics of the effort have said.

The first article of impeachment accuses Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and the second accuses him of a breach of public trust.

Democrats have said the handful of impeachment inquiry hearings led by House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green hearings failed to provide evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and instead showed policy disagreements.

But House Republicans have still pushed for a Senate trial.

“The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in a letter to Schumer last month. “To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told local reporters last week that he expects Schumer to hold a vote to dismiss or table the motion to impeach Mayorkas. Either option would require only a simple majority of senators.

With the slim majority Democrats have in the Senate, it’s likely the two articles of impeachment go nowhere and Mayorkas remains in his role.

“My preference would be to actually have a trial, but I think the majority is likely to prevent that,” McConnell told reporters.

As the impeachment managers walk over the articles of impeachment to the other chamber, Mayorkas will also be in the Senate Wednesday, testifying before an appropriations panel about DHS funding for fiscal year 2025.

The House Republican impeachment managers 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, Laurel Lee of Florida, August Pfluger of Texas and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Campaign issue

Since Republicans flipped the House last year, GOP lawmakers have continued to ramp up their opposition to the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

The topic has also taken center stage in the 2024 presidential campaigns, as Biden and former President Donald Trump paid competing visits to the southern border in March.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee again this year, has campaigned on fears surrounding immigration — as he did in his 2016 presidential campaign, and the Biden administration is struggling to deal with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in more than 20 years.

The first major push by Republicans last year was after the White House ended a pandemic-era tool known as Title 42 that was used to expel migrants. House Republicans the same day passed H.R. 2, a messaging bill that is filled with Trump-era immigration policies.

And following a bipartisan Senate deal that resulted from months of negotiations, House Republicans quickly sided with Trump, who urged them to reject the deal because he wanted to campaign on the issue.

Senate Republicans soon walked away from the deal to overhaul U.S. immigration law that Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., negotiated.

Tensions in Congress only increased following the collapse of that deal. House Republicans’ aggravation with the White House reached its peak with the impeachment of Mayorkas in late February.

On the eve of Biden’s State of the Union address in early March, House Republicans passed a bill named after a Georgia college student Laken Riley, whose murder has been blamed by conservatives on White House immigration policies.

GOP target

Impeaching Mayorkas has been a goal of Republicans – especially for Greene. She first introduced articles of impeachment for Mayorkas in September of last year, months before any impeachment inquiry began.

Republicans held two public impeachment hearings in January. The first included Republican attorneys general from three states – Montana, Oklahoma, Missouri – and a law scholar. Those attorneys general argued their states had been harmed by the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

The second hearing consisted of two mothers who said that the Biden administration’s immigration policies played a role in their daughters’ deaths.

Mayorkas was not a witness at either hearing.

Green, who has presided over impeachment efforts, has argued that the committee collected evidence in a December report from committee Republicans that found Mayorkas 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.

He had a rocky confirmation process in 2021, with several Senate Republicans raising issues about the Biden administration rolling back Trump-era immigration policies.

When the Senate finally confirmed Mayorkas, six Republicans joined Democrats to make the 56-43 confirmation vote bipartisan. 

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 of Ohio.

McKenna Horsley contributed to this report.

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