House Republicans released articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday, prompting the federal government to respond in a scathing memo calling the impeachment effort “unconstitutional [and] evidence free.” In addition to accusing Mayorkas of not following immigration laws, the GOP’s articles claim Mayorkas “terminated contracts” to build Donald Trump’s wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Republican House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green said in a statement on Sunday, “These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment.”
“Republicans don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it,” DHS wrote in a memo responding to the articles. “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 statement continued, saying that the “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.”
In the articles, Republicans alleged Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors by failing to detain every single migrant found crossing the border, claiming that he has engaged in “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.” They also said he “knowingly made false statements, and knowingly obstructed lawful oversight” of Homeland Security.
“This is what gaslighting looks like,” Rep. Robert Garcia posted on X, formerly Twitter, after the articles were released. “Days after Donald Trump publicly ordered his congressional pawns to oppose any border reform, they want to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for not securing our border. We need real immigration reform, not political stunts like this.”
Trump tried to throw a wrench into a pending Senate immigration deal by publicly criticizing it last week. “We need a Strong, Powerful, and essentially ‘PERFECT’ Border and, unless we get that, we are better off not making a Deal,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.
He followed up that message on Saturday with an all-caps post: “A BAD BORDER DEAL IS FAR WORSE THAN NO BORDER DEAL!”
On Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson released a letter to his Republican colleagues claiming that “the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement.” He added, “If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway.”
Johnson also announced in the letter that the House will impeach Mayorkas “as soon as possible.” The GOP-led Homeland Security committee will review the articles on Tuesday before bringing it for a vote in front of the full House.