EXCLUSIVE — House Republicans face a decision of whether to quickly impeach the Biden administration official at the center of the border crisis or investigate the broader immigration security issues and see where it leads.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) became the first member of Congress to move to remove Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, arguing the situation at the 2,000-mile southern boundary warranted a serious and immediate response.
“We really can’t fix the current problem and … the future without addressing the past,” Fallon said in an interview with the Washington Examiner this week, pushing for impeachment. “It gives me no joy to do it … but what we saw unfold on the border over the last two years — a crisis then turned into a catastrophe, and now it’s near collapse.”
The second-term Dallas-area congressman said Mayorkas has violated federal law three times in his post atop the 250,000-person government organization. Fallon intends to make Mayorkas the second-ever Cabinet secretary in history to be impeached, following Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876.
“The American people today need to know what he’s done is gross dereliction of duty, but history needs to know, too,” said Fallon. “We’ve only had one Cabinet secretary impeached in our history. … Last was in 1876 and people, you know, will say, ‘I wonder what happened there.’ People are going to say, ‘In 2023, I wonder what happened there.'”
MAYORKAS SCOLDED BORDER PATROL IN ‘WHIPPING’ INCIDENT AFTER LEARNING AGENT DID NOT HAVE A WHIP
Fallon, an Air Force veteran, said he was “certainly” not alone and had already seen significant support from his colleagues, including 33 co-sponsors who have signed on despite the House not being in session in Washington this week.
“I believe that number will grow to 50 or possibly even 100. So I’d say it’s a strong movement within the party and the conference,” Fallon said about the articles, which he filed on Jan. 9. “We also are united in so much, as we know that nothing’s going to get passed unless there’s 218 of us singing from the same sheet of music, if you will — when we only have 222 members, you can only lose four.”
In December 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported the highest number of monthly encounters nationwide in history: 301,625 people. Since Feb. 1, 2021, 10 days after President Joe Biden took office, more than 5.2 million noncitizens have been encountered at the border. Monthly encounters have more than quadrupled from when former President Donald Trump left office.
March — 222,574
April — 235,785
May — 241,136
June — 207,834
July — 200,162
August — 204,087
September — 227,547
October — 231,277
November — 234,896
December — 251,487Our southern border is wide open and the entire world knows it.
— Rep. Pat Fallon (@RepPatFallon) January 23, 2023
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the Washington Examiner in an interview on Jan. 20 that his committee would be starting the committee’s new session with testimony from front-line DHS personnel, not Mayorkas.
“Mayorkas just gave an interview this week and said the border was secure. That is a joke,” said Comer. “He is either the biggest fabricator of facts in the history of America or he is clueless. Now, we know that people on the front line have met with Mayorkas and expressed their displeasure and outrage over this administration’s policies, but we want to give them an opportunity to say that under oath in front of … everyone in America.”
Fallon’s early push to force the party to deal with Mayorkas rubs up against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) strategy to investigate before going down the political path of impeachment that seems doomed to fail in the Senate. Critics like Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) said the GOP shouldn’t rush to impeach but develop a methodical case first.
During a visit to the border two weeks after the November 2022 election, McCarthy said ending the border crisis would be the House’s top priority and called on Mayorkas to resign. Investigations into Mayorkas could occur in the Oversight, Judiciary, and Homeland Security committees, but articles of impeachment must pass through the Judiciary Committee before going to the floor.
Fallon, an Oversight Committee member, hopes impeachment hearings will reveal whether the border crisis was a result of Mayorkas’s “incompetence or is he just doing the work of his masters?”
“He doesn’t seem to have a backbone to stand up and do his job,” Fallon said. “What if Biden wants to fire him for getting the numbers down? Biden can answer to the 2024 electorate himself, but Mayorkas doesn’t seem to have any.”
Fallon’s three articles of impeachment accuse the DHS secretary of not fulfilling his duties, lying under oath, and knowingly slandering his own employees.
The first is based on stipulations in the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which states that the homeland security secretary must maintain “operational control” of the southern border. The majority of the 251,000 people in December who either illegally crossed the southern border or lacked authorization to be admitted at ports of entry were released into the United States — an example of how Mayorkas has lost control of the border, the congressman said.
“The second one is he perjured himself in front of Congress when asked if the border was secure. He said it was secure, then he’s caught on a hot mic in a private conversation saying the border is unsustainable and it’s chaos,” said Fallon. “So which is it? I believe he purposely, knowingly, willfully lied.”
Finally, an incident in Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021 in which Border Patrol agents were accused of whipping immigrants showed that the secretary knowingly slandered employees of his own department for political reasons, Fallon said. Mayorkas was told by border officials within 24 hours of the incident that agents do not carry whips, yet the secretary continued not to deny in public that agents had whipped people.
Fallon does not believe the evidence currently available would be enough for a guilty vote in the Senate but said that may change if Democrats facing tough reelections in 2024 are put to the test.
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“We’re going to go where the evidence leads us,” Fallon said. “What if there is more that we discover that is so egregious that you’ve got some Democrats that are up for reelection in 2024 that vote for it?”
A DHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner after Fallon initially filed the articles that Mayorkas had no plans to leave his post.
“Secretary Mayorkas is proud to advance the noble mission of this department, support its extraordinary workforce, and serve the American people,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “The department will continue our work to enforce our laws and secure our border, while building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system.
“Members of Congress can do better than point the finger at someone else; they should come to the table and work on solutions for our broken system and outdated laws, which they have not updated in over 40 years,” they added.
