Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testifies on Capitol Hill in November 2023.

Alex Brandon/AP

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Alex Brandon/AP

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testifies on Capitol Hill in November 2023.

Alex Brandon/AP

The House Committee on Homeland Security on Sunday launched draft articles of impeachment in opposition to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

In its 20-page resolution, the Republican-led committee accuses Mayorkas of excessive crimes and misdemeanors, together with “willfully” disregarding immigration regulation.

The two articles accuse Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” for failing to handle the scenario on the U.S.-Mexico border and “breach of public trust.”

Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said the committee had “exhausted all other options to hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable” and that “Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and impeach him.”

Democrats on the committee and DHS are calling the articles a “sham.”

Ranking member Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., accused Republicans of abusing their impeachment energy to “score political points.”

“Republicans don’t actually want to work towards bipartisan solutions to fix the border – in fact, they have repeatedly sabotaged the Secretary’s efforts to secure the border and denied DHS’ funding requests,” Thompson mentioned in a press release. “Secretary Mayorkas is upholding the law and honoring the public trust as he has throughout his more than 30 years of service to our Nation.”

DHS responded Sunday with a memo that known as Republicans’ effort “a distraction from other vital national security priorities and the work Congress should be doing to actually fix our broken immigration laws.”

“They don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it. That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” the memo learn.

The committee plans to fulfill on Tuesday at 10 a.m. to mark up the articles after which may vote someday time after that. If the articles go the committee, they then go to the total House for an impeachment vote. It would then be as much as the Democratic-led Senate on whether or not to convict.

Congressional Republicans have blamed Mayorkas for the arrival of a record number of migrants arriving on the southern border final yr — roughly 2.5 million, in line with information from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Biden administration has attributed the immigration surge to an uptick in violent crises all over the world which have displaced many individuals.

Still, the complaints from congressional Republicans have been echoed by some conservative state leaders, who’ve bused and flown teams of migrants to cities reminiscent of New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Leaders of cities who’ve obtained buses of migrants have known as the efforts politically motivated. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told NPR last year that the trouble was a “political stunt that was despicable.”

For his half, Mayorkas and others within the DHS say it is the job of Congress to overtake federal immigration legal guidelines and repair the nation’s damaged immigration system.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is presently at work on a brand new immigration deal, however former President Donald Trump — who can also be operating for the Republican presidential nomination this yr — opposes the settlement, which has threatened to upend its possibilities of success.

The solely Cabinet official in U.S. historical past ever to be impeached was William Belknap, the secretary of conflict underneath President Ulysses Grant. Belknap’s 1876 impeachment was associated to bribery allegations and occurred after he had already resigned.