House Judiciary Republicans are constructing a case against Mayorkas, asserting that he should face impeachment.
The House Judiciary Committee Takes Aim at DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
The House’s primary impeachment body took a step forward toward pushing out the Biden administration’s top border security official, which would mark the first Cabinet-level official to be fired by Congress.
The GOP-run House Judiciary Committee concluded after four hours of questioning Wednesday that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was misinformed, uninformed, and dishonest about the state of his 260,000-person department. It was Judiciary’s first hearing targeting Mayorkas after the House Homeland Security Committee launched an extensive, ongoing investigation into the former Obama administration DHS official.
“Everything’s on the table as to what’s next,” a senior GOP aide wrote in a text message following the hearing.
Others were more blunt. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) urged Mayorkas to resign at the hearing.
“No, I will not,” Mayorkas said. “I am incredibly proud of the work that is performed in the Department of Homeland Security.”
“That leaves us with no other option,” Van Drew replied. “You should be impeached.”
The hearing could serve as a litmus test for whether Judiciary Republicans could build and execute a solid case against Mayorkas, and Republicans emerged confident that they had cornered Mayorkas on his missteps at the border over the past 30 months.
The GOP’s well-organized line of questioning jumped around to various immigration and border issues but largely left Mayorkas speechless and, in their eyes, defenseless.
“We asked you to be prepared. We wrote letters in the last several weeks to be prepared to answer that kind of question,” Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said at the conclusion of the hearing. “The fact that you won’t is bad, and the fact that you don’t know is just as bad.”
But lawmakers quickly realized as questioning continued that despite submitting a 24-page written statement ahead of the hearing, Mayorkas had not brought the answers to their questions on the number of illegal immigrants released from the border into the United States and the number of illegal immigrants deported since January 2021.
“You don’t know the number of how many you’ve sent home,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). “1.2 million people today have been through your entire process, right? They’ve been through what you call a removal proceeding. It’s just an amnesty dance because after the 1.2 million people get an order from the judge saying that they don’t have a basis to be here, you still don’t remove them.”
“Congressman, that is false,” Mayorkas said.
“I’m asking you about a subset that you won’t send home, and the reason you’re smirking about it, and the reason you won’t answer my question, is because everybody gets the joke,” Gaetz said.
Rep. Thomas Tiffany (R-WI) slammed Mayorkas for not agreeing with FBI Director Christopher Wray’s assessment earlier this month that the U.S. was “seeing all sorts of very serious, very serious criminal threats across the border.”
“Who’s lying? Him or you?” Tiffany asked before the committee shifted on without an answer.
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), a Ukrainian immigrant and businesswoman, chided Mayorkas for his attitude toward the seriousness of the hearing.
“We have a national security crisis, and you sit in here and you’re looking at us with a very smiley face. It’s unacceptable,” Spartz said.
Gaetz lambasted Mayorkas for a new Biden administration initiative that allows noncitizens to request an appointment with customs officers at the southern border’s land ports of entry rather than cross illegally between ports. Most noncitizens who obtain appointments through the CBP One app are released into the country on parole, which Republicans have dubbed a bait and switch that makes illegal crossings appear to be declining.
“You’ve scaled it to the moon. Like this app that you’ve got everybody downloading is like the Disney Fastpass into the country, never to be subject to actual removal,” Gaetz said.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) asked if there was a cap to the number of noncitizens who illegally entered the country that it would allow to remain in the U.S.
“You’ve already released more than 2.1 million illegal immigrants into this country since you took office and that’s the population the size of the state of Nebraska,” McClintock said. “While the Border Patrol has been consumed by taking names and changing diapers at the border, one and a half million known gotaways have illegally entered the country as well. That’s an additional illegal population the size of the state of Hawaii. So once again, I would ask you: What is the limit or is there one?”
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was criticized by Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) for calling Mayorkas “dishonest” but would not apologize after the Democrat’s reprimand.
“I’ve been in Congress seven years. I think you’re the most dishonest witness that has ever appeared before the Judiciary Committee,” Johnson said. “This is such a frustrating exercise for us because our constituents want answers. … They’re tired of people dying from overdoses, and it’s your fault.”
In a debate over the legitimacy of claims for asylum at the southern border, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said 9 in 10 were ultimately denied, but Mayorkas disagreed with his numbers. Issa later followed up with exact numbers and told Mayorkas that 83% of initial asylum claims were ultimately denied, undercutting the secretary’s claim that his initial statement was false.
Tiffany asked Mayorkas how many Afghans had been airlifted from the country in mid-2021 when the U.S. military pulled out all troops. Mayorkas said he did not know the number of Afghans who had been flown to the U.S. and released into the country under parole, a category different than refugee and refugee status.
“There were 70,192 Afghans that were brought into the United States. They were brought here on parole for two years,” Tiffany said. “Will you be reviewing each individual status on a case-by-case basis as this expiration happens? The commander down at Fort McCoy in my state, when I interviewed him two years ago, he said they were not interviewed on a case-by-case basis [to obtain parole status initially].”
Mayorkas defended himself in a portion of questioning by the top committee Democrat, Rep. Jerry Nadler (NY).
“I know very well in my 22 years of service, including 12 years as a federal prosecutor, that we are a nation of laws, and I take our obligation to follow the law scrupulously. I adhere to it strictly,” Mayorkas said. ”Our parole authority is being used consistently with the law. It is a discretion authority that the statute provides. We exercise it on a case-by-case basis.”
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), a progressive Democrat who represents a district on the Mexico border, knocked Republicans for turning the event into a show.
“The problem we face today is that the majority of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are only interested in performance, which is why they yell so loudly and try to turn the nation’s attention away from their own lack of solutions. And that’s what this hearing is ultimately about,” she said.
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