Homeland Security again. Alejandro Mayorcas faced verbal attack from Republicans during a hearing on Tuesday, with some calling for his resignation and one suggesting a vote of no confidence.
Republican Senator Roger Marshall told the secretary he was “negligent in his duties” and said he intended to introduce a bill requiring the Senate to hold a vote of no confidence “in the coming days.”
On the House side, Republicans have long been calling for impeachment, but no article has ever been put to a vote. Marshall cited the need to support House impeachment efforts.
I am willing to receive articles of impeachment from the House of Representatives and to conduct an impeachment trial in this body. But in the meantime, I believe the Senate should show our colleagues in the House that we are sick of failures from the Department of Homeland Security and believe the Secretary is unfit to faithfully carry out the duties of his office,” he said.
Articles of impeachment must be approved by the House of Representatives before the Senate investigation can officially begin.
At one point during the Homeland Security Committee hearing, Mayorkas asked the senator if he could respond. Marshall shot him down: “I want you to answer my questions, not give me lectures.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, at one point estimated between 4 million and 5 million people crossed the southern border over the past two years. Mayorcas responded that he was “very focused on the security of our borders”.
Homeland Security again. Alejandro Mayorcas faced verbal attack from Republicans during a hearing on Tuesday
No you are not. No, you’re not, Johnson entered. “I don’t want to hear that.”
Johnson then asked Mayorcas how many girls were being trafficked for sex at the southern border and the minister said his department had made combating human trafficking a “priority”.
“But you fail miserably,” Johnson said.
“You don’t give me any statistics at all in terms of how many people are trafficked, how many young girls are trafficked for sex,” Johnson said. You don’t have proof. You won’t even answer the well-documented body count at the border.
“Don’t you care?” added the Wisconsin Republican. “Do you not have an iota of human sympathy for the policy of open borders, the kind of human depredations it causes?” You just sit there looking with a blank look on your face.
He again included the number of border crossings over the past two years. “And you say this is a priority?” He said. ‘Mr. Secretary, you should resign.
Democratic Sen. Tom Carper, D-D, berated GOP colleagues for softening the secretary.
“I just want to take a moment to ask my colleagues here today to treat the secretary with the respect he deserves,” Carper said, noting Mayorcas’ dedication to hard work.
Migrants stand near the border wall after crossing the Rio Bravo River with the intention of turning themselves in to US Border Patrol agents, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, April 14, 2023.
Migrants turn themselves in to US authorities to seek political asylum in the United States, on April 17, 2023 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
I was raised – I think most of the people on this committee were raised – to treat others the way we want to be treated. I will not treat anyone the way I have seen you treated before on other committees and again here by at least one of our colleagues today.
But Sen. Josh Hawley supported calls to resign. “You should have resigned a long time ago, and if you can’t change course, you should be removed from office,” said Hawley, R-Missouri.
Meanwhile, the deputy chief of homeland security, Rep. Mark Green, is reported to be in the House said the donors He was going to file charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against Mallorcas.
Mayorkas told the senators that it was up to Congress to fix the “broken” immigration system.
Some Republican lawmakers set their sights on the New York Times reporting that Biden administration officials knew unaccompanied children brought to the border were being trafficked for child labour.
Placing unaccompanied children into the care of vetted guardians is mostly the responsibility of Health and Human Services (HHS).
But Hawley accused Mayorkas of “pressuring officials and agencies to skip the vetting process and get these children out as soon as possible to unscreened sponsors.”
“You’re failing miserably,” Senator Ron Johnson told Majorcas, calling on him to resign.
Senator Roger Marshall said he would propose a vote of no confidence in the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
The Times reports did not mention Mallorcas and focused mostly on the role of HHS and high-ranking officials from Biden.
“Senator, I look forward to discussing this issue further because you are terribly misrepresenting the facts,” Mayorkas said.
Separately, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez unveiled an immigration plan on Tuesday for the Biden administration that focuses mostly on executive actions that would bypass a congressional deadlock.
The scheme called for promoting new pathways to citizenship, providing more humanitarian aid to specific countries, increasing funding for border security, and launching more efforts to target human traffickers.
But on Monday, House Republicans unveiled their sweeping immigration bill that would tighten asylum eligibility, expand detention for immigrant families, and crack down on hiring of undocumented workers.
The House Judiciary Committee is expected to approve the bill on Wednesday. He will likely be dead by the time he reaches the Senate and may struggle to pass the House, since Republicans have differing ideas on how best to handle immigration.
