House Homeland Security Committee Investigates Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for ‘Dereliction of Duty’
On February 2, 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas took an oath to ‘faithfully discharge the duties of the office’ as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Two and a half years later, it is patently evident that not only is Mr. Mayorkas not faithfully discharging his duties as Secretary, but that he never had any intention of doing so.
On June 14, 2023, the House Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), announced that it has launched an investigation to determine whether Secretary Mayorkas is in dereliction of his duties and in violation of his oath of office.
As Secretary, Mayorkas has refused to carry out his duties to enforce our nation’s immigration laws or secure our borders, resulting in an unprecedented humanitarian and national security crisis.
His actions have empowered and enriched international criminal cartels that engage in the abhorrent trade of smuggling and trafficking human beings, often with tragic consequences. Additionally, those cartels smuggle lethal narcotics, responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans each year, across the borders Mayorkas refuses to protect. At the same time, his defiance of our laws and his oath of office are imposing unsustainable burdens on communities all across the United States, costing American taxpayers additional billions of dollars.
Secretary Mayorkas has also overseen a precipitous decline in morale among the ranks of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the two primary agencies within DHS that are charged with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. While career law enforcement officers have been disciplined by Mayorkas and other political appointees for attempting to do their jobs (even when they have been exonerated, such as the case of the mounted agents falsely accused of whipping migrants), the secretary has subcontracted important duties to open border advocacy groups, with little oversight.
Mayorkas has also repeatedly lied to the American public, and even under oath in testimony to Congress, claiming that our borders are secure. These falsehoods have been directly contradicted by CBP and ICE agents on the front lines, and by the recently resigned head of the Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, who twice testified under oath that we do not have operational control of our borders.
More than a year ago, FAIR initiated calls for Mayorkas’ impeachment, citing many of the same reasons as the Committee did in opening its investigation of his actions. Since then, the situation has only grown worse. In addition to defying his duty to control the border and faithfully enforce our laws, Mayorkas, in recent months, has created illegal schemes under which DHS is allowing hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens to enter the country by abusing the Executive Branch’s very limited authority of humanitarian parole.
If the committee concludes that Secretary Mayorkas is in dereliction of his duties and in violation of his oath of office, the next step will be for the Judiciary Committee to consider initiating impeachment proceedings.