House Republicans Renew Calls to Impeach Mayorkas Next Congress
FAIR Take | December 2022
Twenty House Republicans and three former Trump administration immigration officials gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday afternoon, December 13, to renew calls to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. One by one, they stepped to the podium to lay out the case against Mayorkas, highlighting, among other things, the massive spike in fentanyl seizures, the vast number of illegal aliens crossing the border, over a million known “gotaways,” and repeated assertions the border is secure despite obvious evidence otherwise. Participants stood next to a poster with an image highlighting Mayorkas’ absurd affirmative answer – “Yes” – when asked during a November 15 hearing whether the border was secure.
In opening remarks, Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a co-chair of the Border Security Caucus, laid out the event’s premise: “I expect the House Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment inquiry in the 118th Congress to formally investigate Secretary Mayorkas and finally to proceed to impeach him. The investigation will further prove what we have been saying all along about Secretary Mayorkas.” Biggs was the first Member of Congress to introduce formal articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, on August 10, 2021. His impeachment resolution has attracted the support of 32 Republican co-sponsors, including most of the attendees at Tuesday’s press conference.
Rodney Scott, former Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol under both Trump and Biden, shared some of his personal experience with his former boss. “I learned very quickly not to trust Alejandro Mayorkas. His statements behind closed doors did not match his actions or what he stated to America…in March of 2021 he went on all the Sunday talk shows and told everyone the border was closed and secure. And then I was given talking points. I was supposed to say the same thing. Not only did I refuse, I questioned that statement.” Not surprisingly, shortly thereafter Scott was removed from his post by the Biden administration without any rationale.
Several of the speakers referenced their own fact-finding trips to the southern border. Congressman Michael Cloud (R-TX) shared some sobering observations from such trips in an exclusive interview with FAIR after the press conference. “I’ve pulled the wristbands out of the mud that the cartels give these migrants and [they] treat them like animals. They’re just for-profit. I’ve talked to the ranchers that find rape trees on their property. I’ve visited the facilities where half the young women there will admit to being sexually assaulted on the journey. It’s just a tragic, tragic situation.” A “rape tree” is a spot where migrants are sexually assaulted and their clothes hung as a sort of perverse “trophy.”
Mark Morgan, a former Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection under Trump and a FAIR senior fellow, made perhaps the most impassioned and animated appeal of the day. Referring to Mayorkas’ tenure as a “reign of terror,” he said, “[Mayorkas] has abdicated his responsibility. He has abandoned his oath. He is the antithesis of what the American people should demand in their Secretary of Homeland Security. He has served as this administration’s chief architect of their open-border policies…I hope on day one, come January, that every Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives shows the same political courage, strength, and will of the men and women standing behind me.”
Republicans will have a thin majority in the House of Representatives next Congress, but will still be in the minority in the Senate. Even a successful impeachment effort will therefore fizzle in the upper chamber, which debates whether to convict any official impeached by the House. Nevertheless, FAIR supports the Mayorkas impeachment effort as a tool to increase pressure on an administration that has been recklessly endangering American lives by aiding and abetting the unprecedented border crisis.