Posted on 02/06/24
| News Source: The Hill
A House GOP effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas failed in an embarrassing fashion Tuesday as three Republicans joined Democrats in voting against what would have been the second-ever impeachment of a Cabinet official.
The 214-216 vote is a stunning loss for a GOP that has faced continual pressure from its right flank to impeach a Biden official, even as the party has waffled over which one to focus on.
The failure came about because of the surprise appearance in the chamber of Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who showed up unexpected to vote against the bill.
Republicans entered the vote with two expected “no” votes, but then a third House GOP lawmaker, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), also voted against impeachment.
A fourth Republican, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), the vice chair of the GOP conference, then flipped his vote to “no” seconds before the vote closed, a procedural move that allows the conference to bring the legislation back to the floor at a later date.
Republicans had accused Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” claiming he violated immigration laws by failing to detain a sufficient number of migrants.
No administration has ever detained all illegal migrants, and immigration law experts who have weighed the claim determined Mayorkas did not violate any laws.
Republicans also accused him of “breach of public trust.”
“Republicans have failed at making a constitutionally viable case for impeachment. Neither of the impeachment charges are a ‘high crime and misdemeanor’… Impeachment over mere policy disputes was deliberately rejected by the framers, and those disputes are best settled in the court system,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the panel, said.