The Republican-led House of Representatives delivered articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to the Senate on Tuesday, demanding a full trial that is unlikely to happen in the Democratic-led upper chamber.
➡️ How we got here
In February, the House impeached Mayorkas in a razor-thin 214-213 vote over his handling of the southern U.S. border.
A two-thirds majority would be needed to convict him in the Senate, which is virtually impossible given that Democrats have called the case against Mayorkas baseless.
Republicans allege that Mayorkas willfully failed to enforce southern border laws, which they claim led to millions of illegal border crossings.
On Tuesday afternoon, the 11 House Republicans named to prosecute the case against Mayorkas made the ceremonial walk across the U.S. Capitol to present the articles of impeachment to the Senate, which they read aloud on the Senate floor.
📢 How did the DHS respond?
Homeland Security spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg accused Republicans of playing “political games” and highlighted Mayorkas’s work on a bipartisan border bill in the Senate that the House GOP blocked.
“Secretary Mayorkas spent months helping a bipartisan group of Senators craft a tough but fair bill that would give DHS the tools necessary to meet today’s border security challenges,” Ehrenberg said in a statement. “But the same House Republicans playing political games with this impeachment chose to block that bipartisan compromise.”
Mayorkas was the first Cabinet official to be impeached in nearly 150 years. The last time that happened was in 1876, when the House impeached Secretary of War William Belknap over kickbacks in government contracts.
➡️ What’s next?
The Senate will meet on Wednesday afternoon to take up the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas. Senate President Pro Tem Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, will preside over the trial. At 1 p.m. ET, she and the 99 other senators will be sworn in as jurors.
But Senate Democrats have said they oppose a lengthy trial and are expected to quickly dismiss the charges with a simple majority vote.
