Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is refusing to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee.
House Republicans have increasingly called for Mayorkas’s impeachment over the crisis at the southern border and rising rates of illegal immigration during President Joe Biden’s administration. The House Homeland Security Committee is set to vote on articles of impeachment on Jan. 30.
The committee has accused Mayorkas of violating his oath of office “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and of “willfully and systemically” refusing to “comply with Federal immigration laws.”
“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” the secretary told the committee’s chairman, Congressman Mark Green.
In his letter, Mayorkas said that he had worked with Green’s staff to identify a date for him to testify for the eighth time when he was invited to submit written testimony and Green “issued a statement representing that every member of the Committee’s majority already has rendered their decision.”
“The problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new,” wrote Mayorkas. “Our immigration laws were simply not built for the 21st century migration patterns.”
The secretary said that in “this post-COVID period” immigration increased due to the “greatest displacement of people since World War II,” as well as “violence, food insecurity, severe poverty, corruption, authoritarian regime, and the destruction of homes and communities by extreme weather events.” These conditions have empowered “human smuggling organizations” that “exploit migrants as part of a billion-dollar criminal enterprise.”
Mayorkas then said “only Congress” can provide a “legislative solution” and stressed the need for additional Border Patrol Agents and technology.
“Instead, you claim that we have failed to enforce our immigration laws,” he continued. “This is false.”
He claimed the Biden administration has “removed, returned, or expelled” more migrants in the last three years than the Trump administration did in the previous four years. The secretary said that as of May 12, 2023, the Department of Homeland Security had removed over 500,000 people – “the vast majority of whom crossed the Southern Border.”
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, there were 371,036 encounters with illegal immigrants nationwide in December, marking a new monthly record. Just over 302,000 of these encounters were at the United States-Mexico border and, of those, about 250,000 of the encounters were arrests made at a port of entry.
“As of Aug. 31, 2023, DHS removed just 2 percent of illegal aliens who did not show up to their immigration court hearings after establishing credible fear of persecution at the border,” the organization states in another report. “As of Dec. 10, 2023, 1,323,264 illegal aliens with final orders of removal still remained in the U.S.”
FAIR also noted that data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement indicates that 2,540 of 72,678 non-criminals were removed during the 2023 fiscal year.
The DHS secretary maintains that he has not acted in a manner that encouraged cartel activity or failed to secure the nation’s border.
“Undoubtedly, we have policy disagreements on the historically divisive issue of immigration,” Mayorkas wrote. “The Chairman and Members of the Committee’s majority have harshly criticized the Department’s responsiveness to oversight. The allegations are baseless and inaccurate.”
“I will defer a discussion of the Constitutionality of your current effort to the many respected scholars and experts across the political spectrum who already have opined that it is contrary to the law,” he added. “What I will not defer to others is a response to the politically motivated accusations and personal attacks you have made against me.”
Mayorkas also summarized his career, including his four years as the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and his accolades – the Distinguished Service Award and the Distinguished Public Service Award.
Congressman Dan Goldman of New York came to Mayorkas’s defense while speaking with MSNBC, saying the secretary has “tried mightly” to address the migrant crisis.
"It’s a completely fabricated and baseless foundation to move forward with impeachment,” said Goldman. “Both of their articles have never been used before and they have put forward no legal support that these would rise to high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Goldman accused Republicans of sabotaging and undermining President Biden’s “efforts to use his very limited executive authority to address the issue at the border.”
