House Republicans walked two impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday, with the upper chamber expected to scrap a trial of President Biden’s top border official for failing to enforce immigration law and lying to Congress about the US border being “secure.”
House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the lead manager of the impeachment, delivered the articles to the Senate in the afternoon, along with 10 other managers.
“The evidence is clear—Secretary Mayorkas should be tried by the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors. Specifically, the House found that he willfully and systemically refused to comply with the laws passed by Congress, and breached the public trust,” Green said in a statement.
“These are serious charges that I urge my colleagues in the Senate to treat with the gravity and deliberation they deserve,” he added. “The Senate has a responsibility to conduct a full trial, hear the evidence, and render a verdict.”
In a rare sight, all senators were seated at their desks with copies of the articles laid out before them when Green and his fellow impeachment managers entered.
The Homeland Security chairman went on to read the entirety of the resolution against Mayorkas into the record before he and the others departed in silence back to the House.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans expect their chamber’s Democratic majority to scuttle a full trial and any vote to convict Mayorkas.
In a Senate floor speech on Tuesday morning, McConnell referred to the charges against Mayorkas as “serious.”
“The facts of the crisis are well-known,” he said. “Since January of 2021, [Customs and Border Protection] has recorded more than 7.5 million illegal crossings at our southern border, while observers estimate over 1.5 million known gotaways,” referring to those who evaded apprehension.
“The House managers will make the case for Secretary Mayorkas’ role in neglecting and exacerbating that crisis,” McConnell went on. “And as events of such solemn and rare responsibility as convening a court of impeachment, I intend to give these charges my full and undivided attention.”
“Of course, that would require that senators actually get the opportunity to hold a trial,” he added.
McConnell and others such as Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) have also pledged to oppose tabling a trial, which would break 200 years of Senate precedent.
Schumer has committed to swearing in the 100 senators as jurors on Wednesday at 1 p.m., but has said nothing about whether he will use a procedural vote to table the impeachment.
“We want to address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” Schumer said in a Tuesday floor speech. “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”
“This would set an awful precedent for Congress,” he added. “Every time there’s a policy disagreement in the House, they send it over here to tie the Senate in knots to do an impeachment trial? That’s an abuse of the process.”
Schumer supported both impeachments of former President Donald Trump, saying in December 2019: “The American people deserve that the Senate conduct a full and fair trial.”
But House and Senate Democrats — as well as three House Republicans who voted against Mayorkas’ impeachment — have all denied that the secretary’s actions rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The Homeland Security secretary is only the second Cabinet official in US history to be impeached, with the last being Secretary of War William Belknap, who resigned before being acquitted by the Senate in 1876 on charges of corruption.
