Border battles roil US Congress; Republicans push Mayorkas impeachment

The House's Homeland Security Committee last week approved two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a near-unprecedented step to take against a member of a president's cabinet over a policy dispute. With a narrow 219-212 majority, Republicans will need near unanimity to pass the measures, though even if they do, the Democratic-majority Senate is all but certain to acquit Mayorkas.

The thin U.S. House of Representatives Republican majority faced a test on Tuesday of whether it could hold together to impeach President Joe Biden's top border official, and failure appeared imminent for a Senate bipartisan border security. Concerns over immigration have become a top issue in this year's election campaign, with Republican former President Donald Trump preparing for a likely November rematch with Biden. Trump has separately been pushing congressional Republicans to reject a bipartisan border security deal unveiled on Sunday.

Republican opposition to the $118 billion bill, which also includes aid for Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion, gained steam on Tuesday when the party's No. 2 senator told reporters he would vote against it. U.S. Senator John Thune voiced his opposition the day before the Senate is scheduled to take the first procedural vote on the border security bill. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pleaded with Republicans to at least allow debate to open on the

bill. "We all know what's going on here. Donald Trump would rather keep the chaos at the border so he can exploit it on the campaign trail instead of letting the Senate do the right thing and fix it," Schumer said. "He would rather let Ukraine suffer on the battlefield instead of being tough on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin."

House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that if the Senate passes it, the bill would be "dead on arrival" in his chamber. The House's Homeland Security Committee last week approved two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a near-unprecedented step to take against a member of a president's cabinet over a policy dispute.

With a narrow 219-212 majority, Republicans will need near unanimity to pass the measures, though even if they do, the Democratic-majority Senate is all but certain to acquit Mayorkas. REPUBLICAN SKEPTICISM

At least two Republicans have said they will not support the measure. Representative Tom McClintock on Tuesday said the investigation into Mayorkas had failed to "identify an impeachable crime," and Representative Ken Buck made a similar statement on Monday. House Republicans allege that Mayorkas was intentionally lax in securing the long border with Mexico and violated the public trust by making false statements to Congress.

Around 2 million migrants were arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2023. Mayorkas has denied any wrongdoing and has defended his tenure.

The only other time the House voted to impeach a cabinet member was in 1876, when a secretary of war was investigated for corruption. The Senate acquitted him. "Secretary Mayorkas’ actions, both in his intentional refusal to enforce our laws and abandoning the confidence of Americans, require us to act," House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole said on Monday as his panel prepared to set the rules for debating the impeachment charges before the full House.

"If he will not do his duty, then, unfortunately, the House must do its constitutional duty," Cole said. Democrats have condemned the impeachment exercise as an effort to score political points against Biden and his administration in the run-up to the November election.

"This farce of an impeachment is a distraction from other vital national security priorities and the work Congress should be doing to actually fix our broken immigration laws," a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said on Tuesday. "They don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it." Democrats and some legal experts have said the impeachment charges fall well short of evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" under the Constitution's impeachment requirement.