Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives threw Alejandro Mayorkas a life raft in Tuesday’s impeachment vote.
Every Michigan Democratic representative voted against the impeachment: Hillary Scholten, Elissa Slotkin, Rashida Tlaib, Debbie Dingell, Dan Kildee, Haley Stevens, and Shri Thanedar. All of Michigan’s Republican representatives supported impeaching Mayorkas.
The first impeachment article against the Secretary of Homeland Security charges him with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and breach of “the public trust” for uttering “false statements.”
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National Republican Congressional Committee Spokesperson Mike Marinella singled out Scholten for voting against removing Mayorkas from his post.
“Hillary Scholten cares more about saving Joe Biden’s Secretary of Open Borders than securing Michiganders and Americans’ safety from terrorists, fentanyl traffickers and criminal illegal immigrants,” Marinella said. “This is just the latest extreme, anti-border security vote from Scholten.”
The vote came shortly after a new border bill drafted last week was pronounced “dead on arrival” by House Republicans.
“This crisis has been aided and abetted through the unprecedented dereliction of duty of Secretary Mayorkas,” Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., said. “As the House Homeland Security Committee has uncovered, Mayorkas has repeatedly violated, subverted, and simply ignored multiple laws set forth by Congress that he swore an oath to uphold – all while ignoring court orders and lying to Congress and the American people.”
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Bergman added: “The evidence of his wrongdoings is damning. His abuse of power goes well beyond simple bureaucratic incompetence, and his actions which have put our Nation at extreme risk cannot go unanswered.”
In an impassioned 10-minute speech, Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy explained his reasons for voting to impeach Mayorkas, accusing him of intentionally “flooding the zone” with illegal immigrants.
“The secretary of Homeland Security has blatantly ignored the laws of the United States,” Roy said, adding the Secretary’s failure to protect the border “has led directly to the death of American citizens” and to the deaths “of the very migrants that the Secretary suggests they want to try to help.”
Roy said 1,000 migrants died on the Southwest border last year and reminded the House that 53 migrants died in a tractor-trailer in the San Antonio district that he represents. He also noted that 75,000 U.S. citizens died of fentanyl poisoning in 2023.
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“These numbers are off the charts at levels we’ve never seen before, and they are the direct result of the policies enacted by this administration but very specifically by the secretary of Homeland Security. it is his leadership of that department that has led to an abject failure of the department to secure the border,” Roy said.
He added that 331 members of terrorist organizations were encountered crossing the border thus far in the administration of President Joe Biden, while only 11 encounters were reported during former President Donald Trump’s administration.
“Now we see cops being beaten in the streets of New York by people who are here illegally, walking out of the court with no bail, and flicking off the American people,” he said. “We have a woman being dragged out of a parking garage in New York by migrant gangs and dragged on the streets of New York. We have all sorts of danger to the American people, people like a cheerleader getting killed in Texas by somebody here illegally. An illegal who posed as an unaccompanied child who lived with a family in Florida and then killed the family. That’s what we have happening in the United States of America, and it’s directly a consequence of the Secretary of Homeland Security who is failing to secure the homeland as he is charged to do when he takes an oath to fulfill his duty to carry out the laws in the United States.”